Friday 22 June 2018

FO Friday: Marpleridge socks

One of the things I have been meaning to do for approximately forever is to knit socks for my husband. The small stumbling block has been that his feet are a UK size 14 and require over 100 g of sock yarn to knit a pair of socks. As anyone who routinely buys sock yarn in the UK knows, it usually comes in 100 g balls, so buying a second just to knit one pair of socks is a bit of a pain.

In April I finally bit the bullet and order two balls of Opal Solids in the colourway Petrol - I figured that something fairly neutral would be more likely to get worn, and that my husband would probably get more use out of socks made from a slightly more robust sock yarn than socks made from a merino-nylon blend.


As I wanted to keep these socks a surprise, I hid them in plain sight in a unicorn print project bag that was unlikely to draw any attention as it's one I use a lot, and used my trusty copy of Custom Socks by Kate Atherley to work out the sizing (if you knit socks as gifts, the sizing charts at the front of the book are worth the price alone!).



I knew that these socks were going to require quite a lot of knitting (I cast on 76 sts), and that the legs would require over 100 rows, so decided to knit socks with a simple pattern to them to keep me interested, and to make it easier to keep track of the row count for the various sections. The Marpleridge socks pattern from Custom socks ticked almost all the boxes (the largest stitch count given is slightly smaller than I needed, but as it's a 4 stitch repeat, it was easy enough for me to modify the pattern): the 4 row repeat was easy to count as every fourth row is a garter ridge (and I can reliably count to 22 if the markers are nice and clear), and knitting the 4 stitch pattern really wasn't much harder than knitting a vanilla sock.

I was surprised at how quickly these socks knitted up. I cast them on on May 7th (the first day of the Marathon sock KAL) and finished them by the end of May. I presented the first sock to my husband as a birthday present and after that point had to finish knitting them as he knew about them!


Here are the finished socks. I think they went down well - the photo is after wear as he wanted to wear them to work before I got a chance to take a photo of them! I might even make him another pair (eventually!).


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Pattern: Marpleridge by Kate Atherley
Yarn: Opal Solids (Zwerger Garn Opal 4-ply) in 5187 Petrol
Ravelry project page

2 comments:

  1. That will get through some yarn for the marathon sock KAL!
    Out of interest how much did you have left over?

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    1. Hello! I've only just seen this comment, sorry! I had 85g left from two balls. I should just do contract heels, cuffs and toes next time, then I should be able to get a pair of socks out of one ball and the leftovers from another pair of socks.

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