Knitting Blog: Jaywalkers
I am not immune to the lure of the viral knitting pattern, thus I found myself knitting a pair of Jaywalkers over the past couple of months.
How viral? There are 4,625 finished pairs of Jaywalkers listed in the projects database on Ravelry, and 2,228 knitters have this pattern in their queues (i.e. they hope to make it some day).
Here are the pics, before I get to more technical details:
The pattern was designed by Grumperina, and was originally published as a free pattern on an online knitting magazine called Magknits. Alas, poor Magknits ran into financial difficulties and abruptly shut down. This created a small small firestorm in the online knitting world, as people suddenly found their access to much beloved patterns no longer existed. The moral of the story: if you see something you like, assume that everything on the Internet is here-today-quite-possibly-gone-tomorrow, download it as a pdf, and save it on your harddrive! Jaywalker is available again as a free download on Ravelry.
This is a sock knitted from the top down with a grafted toe. The design feature that set the world on fire is the zigzag shaping of the leg and top of the foot, created by increasing and decreasing stitches in certain spots every other row. This works wonderfully with the wide assortment of self-striping socks available on the market. The sock would lose a lot of punch if you knit it in a solid color, because the zigzag effect would not show up.
The yarn was a lot of fun to work with, because it has lots of built in color and pattern changes. I used Lang Jawoll Color Action. A very cool easter egg: Lang includes a small spool of reinforcing yarn in the center of the skein, which I added to the heels and toes. These socks should last me a long, long time.
Oh yeah, these socks are for me. I've knit many pairs out of the great 75% wool, 25% nylon sock yarns offered by so many yarn companies, but never a pair for me.
I usually try to make socks made from self-patterning yarns match. In this case, I decided to be random. Wouldn’t you know it, but sock 1 ended up at almost the same spot in the yarn pattern where it had begun, so these socks match quite closely!
How viral? There are 4,625 finished pairs of Jaywalkers listed in the projects database on Ravelry, and 2,228 knitters have this pattern in their queues (i.e. they hope to make it some day).
Here are the pics, before I get to more technical details:
The pattern was designed by Grumperina, and was originally published as a free pattern on an online knitting magazine called Magknits. Alas, poor Magknits ran into financial difficulties and abruptly shut down. This created a small small firestorm in the online knitting world, as people suddenly found their access to much beloved patterns no longer existed. The moral of the story: if you see something you like, assume that everything on the Internet is here-today-quite-possibly-gone-tomorrow, download it as a pdf, and save it on your harddrive! Jaywalker is available again as a free download on Ravelry.
This is a sock knitted from the top down with a grafted toe. The design feature that set the world on fire is the zigzag shaping of the leg and top of the foot, created by increasing and decreasing stitches in certain spots every other row. This works wonderfully with the wide assortment of self-striping socks available on the market. The sock would lose a lot of punch if you knit it in a solid color, because the zigzag effect would not show up.
The yarn was a lot of fun to work with, because it has lots of built in color and pattern changes. I used Lang Jawoll Color Action. A very cool easter egg: Lang includes a small spool of reinforcing yarn in the center of the skein, which I added to the heels and toes. These socks should last me a long, long time.
Oh yeah, these socks are for me. I've knit many pairs out of the great 75% wool, 25% nylon sock yarns offered by so many yarn companies, but never a pair for me.
I usually try to make socks made from self-patterning yarns match. In this case, I decided to be random. Wouldn’t you know it, but sock 1 ended up at almost the same spot in the yarn pattern where it had begun, so these socks match quite closely!
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