For the Love of Noro

Here's a sneak peek at the latest socks I'm working on....

I cast on for these quick knit socks mainly to use up the yarn that has been sitting on my worktable for several months, but also, with a foggy cold brain, I needed something simple to just knit away. 

I decided to do these toe up since the yarn I'm using is the odd bits of Noro Kureyon Sock left

 over from the two pair of striped socks I knit last summer. Also, I didn’t want to guess at how long to make the leg and still have enough yarn for the foot.  These will be fun when they are

 finished. They will be more fraternal than the other two pair, but that’s part of the fun with the

 Noro.  Sometimes you just don’t know what you will get from one ball to the next. For anyone

 who has never tried Noro, I heartily recommend you try one of the many projects that allow you to play with the colors in the yarn.  These socks combined two color-ways in two row stripes.  There is also a scarf pattern for silk garden (the project that inspired Becca to create the socks that inspired these).  Another fun way to use Noro in a project is Entrelac. 

The heel design is the one that Becca suggested when I said I didn’t like the wrap and turn short row heel I did on my only other attempt at toe-up.  I had to go back and frog the first heel

 because I made the foot too long, but with the adjustments made, I am now getting a perfect fit.  

I can see why some knitters do their socks exclusively toe-up.  It is definitely a plus to be able

 to try the foot on once the heel portion is finished.  The first sock is done and the second only

 about 10 repeats away from the cuff.  Like I said before, a very quick knit.

I have really enjoyed knitting these for more reasons than just being a quick and simple project.

While I was knitting these the color combinations made me flash back to this post and the great trip I had to CA and especially the evening we spent at the farmers market seeing all the lovely flowers, fruits and vegetables….the yellow, gold and orange remind me of the sunflowers and squash we admired, the purple and green stripes of the gorgeous array of eggplants, I didn’t include all of the pictures from that night because it was just too hard to choose.  Here's a selection so you can see why the color combinations in these stripes stirred up memories of that trip and so much more:

Good times!