Sock knitting is plenty of fun as a solitary activity, but it can be even more fun to know that people across the country or around the world are knitting the same socks with the same yarn as you are at the same time. That's the idea behind sock clubs, a concept that's taken off with the help of the Internet and easier access to independent yarn producers.
Sock nuts Charlene Schurch and Beth Parrot have collected 23 designs for socks, all of which were originally designed for sock clubs, along with plenty of tips for customizing the fit of socks, in their book Sock Club: Join the Knitting Adventure.
Getting the Size Right
Sock Club spends more time than most sock knitting books do discussing issues of fit. Many sock patterns say they're for an average-sized woman's foot, but many of us are far from that average and don't really know how to fix a pattern so that it will fit our foot.
Sizing was an issue with a lot of the patterns in the book, too, because they were often originally designed for a single size, and the pattern repeats or techniques involved didn't always easily lend themselves to alteration.
In most cases, however, it was possible to add multiple sizes to the patterns, through a variety of means that knitters can use to change other published patterns or come up with multiple sizes should they be designing socks themselves, such as:
- Changing needle size and/or yarn weight
- Changing the number of pattern repeats
- Changing the spacing between design elements
- Changing the number of stitches around a motif
- Changing elements or adding new elements between motifs
All of these options are explained in detail, and the authors note which techniques are used on which patterns so you can see how they work.
The Patterns
There are 23 beautiful patterns in Sock Club, mostly for women's feet of various sizes. They use a lot of beautiful stitch patterns and techniques, from cables and lace to mosaics and color patterns developed by working with multiple balls through the length of the sock.
This is not a book for new sock knitters: six of the patterns are rated for intermediate knitters and a whopping 17 are for expert sock knitters.
But if you happen to fall into that category, there is a lot to love in this little book. Almost all of the patterns are intriguing and will leave you thinking, "that would be fun to knit."
Some of the socks I'd like to add to my (never ending!) to-knit list include Beaded Lattice, a sock with lattice stitches running down the foot (the beads are only on the leg); the gorgeous slip-stitch, multicolored Gluttony, which blends four skeins of yarn in a single sock; the funky spiraled Rainbow Swirl, which is actually a lot easier to knit than it looks; Cozy Cables, which has little round cables on the leg with ribbing and smaller twists carried down the foot; and the lovely mosaic Teatime, which is also more complex than it looks thanks to a slip stitch pattern.
True fans of sock knitting can't get enough fun knitting patterns, and Sock Club offers a good variety for confident and experienced sock knitters. Those with less skill may want to look at this book just to see what's possible and to inspire themselves to one day be able to create a work of art for the feet.
Publication date: January 2010
