Knitting FO: Lunasea Socks

I could probably temporarily rename this blog "Adventures in knitting stuff that I've had queued on Ravelry for more than 2 years", with the way I've been choosing projects lately.  The latest FO is another pair of socks (first official knitting project for the Seam Allowance!): the Monkey pattern by Cookie A., out of Blue Moon Socks That Rock Lightweight in the Lunasea colorway.  This sock yarn has, in the past, been a little odd to work with. It's a very dense sock yarn, really almost a sport weight compared to stuff like Tosh sock or Malabrigo sock.  It's also very tightly spun and plied, and thus it's not nearly as rub-against-your-cheek-and-sigh soft as those, either.  It knits up into an incredibly hard-wearing fabric, though.  Of all the sock yarns I've knit with, the socks I've knit out of this yarn have yet to get holes (and after five years of being in the rotation, that's saying something).

Gauge has been tricky for me with this yarn in the past, though.  Knitting it up on size 0's is ridiculously dense: more like kevlar than socks.  Knitting on size 1.5's often yields a sock that is comically large in the foot, though.  Oh, and I should mention that only recently have I acquired size 1 sock needles.  So for these socks, I knit the feet on size 1's and the legs on size 1.5's, and it worked like a charm!  They fit nicely, and I'm still as in love with this colorway as I was when I first purchased the yarn back in 2007 (yikes).

 

Just like everyone else in knitterdom has told you, the Monkey pattern is a great one.  There's a reason it's so popular: the lace pattern isn't too hard to read or memorize, it does a great job of breaking up any potential pooling in your variegated yarns, and the rest of the sock construction is straightforward.  I will almost certainly knit this pattern again sometime, as I still have lots of variegated sock yarn in the stash.