Crochet Project: Goth Striped Socks

I started these socks back in mid-December and after numerous reworks of the various sections (in between breaks for other projects) I got about three-fourths of the way done with the socks before deciding to frog them entirely and start over again last Friday. And I finally finished them up last night.
For these socks I used a size E hook, KnitPicks Felici (fingering weight) yarn in Goth and this Boomerang Socks pattern (available on Ravelry). These socks are worked toe to cuff, so you can try them on as they are being worked. I divided the pattern into smaller sections and worked the 2 socks simultaneously (i.e. toe of 1 then toe of 2, half of foot 1 then half foot of 2, other half of foot 1 and then other half of foot 2, etc), which I recommend when making 2 matching items - you stand a much better chance of actually getting them to be exactly the same than if you were to completely finish off one sock and then start making the other.

I originally worked to 40 stitches (5 rounds) for the toe section of my socks before continuing on - and this made a great fitted foot section of the socks - but (as the pattern warns) most crocheted socks are not really stretchy, like knitted socks, and this makes them more difficult to put on. So, after reworking the socks several times, I settled on a toe of 48 stitches (7 rounds). This is actually slightly loose on my toes/foot, but the change in size helped the socks fit much better when I got down to the heel section.

I hadn’t done linked double-crochet in a really long time, so had to look up the stitch and refresh my memory:

“Insert hook in lower horizontal loop on same stitch, yarn over, draw loop through, insert hook in next st on row you are working, yarn over, draw loop through, (yarn over, draw loop through 2 loops on hook) 2 times.”

This was a good change for me from the more standard stitches - it made me have to think a little more about what I was doing. :) And I like the linked stitches; they make the socks warmer I think, since the stitches are a bit less open.

My advice for this pattern, as it would be for most clothing items, is to BE SURE TO TRY IT ON AS YOU GO. The switch from all LDC in the foot section to mostly SC in the heel section (without increasing the total number of stitches in the round - as the pattern is written) made the socks fit much too tightly on my heel/ankle the first time around. However, when I re-worked the socks with the bigger toe/foot section and also made a concentrated effort to crochet loosely (I generally crochet fairly tightly), they fit much better without having to modify the pattern by adding 6-8 stitches (evenly spaced) in the first part of the heel section, like I had to do the first time around to get them to fit.

I had no problems with the way the rest of the socks fit the first time, so I continued on as the pattern is written, working the heel section down to 6 LDC and then back up to all LDCs again to start the cuff. For the cuff section, I just continued in rounds of LDC to use up the remainder of my yarn skein. This resulted in nearly mid-calf high socks.

I like this pattern because of the smooth heel - it’s not awkward feeling like a lot of crocheted sock heels I’ve made before. However, as I described above, the first time around I had a lot of trouble getting the correct size for these socks. Maybe my feet are a weird size/shape? But the key for me to getting good-fitting socks from this pattern was to make them 8 stitches bigger at the beginning than it felt like I would need when trying them on. Despite this small difficulty of making the socks to fit me correctly, I did finally achieve a good, comfortable pair of socks.