Sock Lab, Round Four: Sidewinders

I could not truly say that I have explored alternate sock construction if I hadn't tried turning all parts of a sock on their sides.  Sidewinders is my first completely lengthwise sock, and it was a great choice of pattern - well-thought out, simple idea, multiple sizes, excellent instructions, good results!

In order to get gauge I used needles one size larger than I usually do, and I think that was a mistake - the sock fit fine, but maybe a little baggy by the end of the day, and I like my yarn knit up tighter in general.  My yarn choice was great - striping yarn whose color changes were long enough to make nice stripes even though each row of my sock was up to 150 stitches long.

My favorite part of this sock is the way the stripe dips down at the heel.

My only difficulty with the pattern was that I ended up with ladders in the two sections that involved paired decreases.  I switched from skp to ssk, and thought that was helping, but when I wore the socks it was clear that I just wasn't able to tighten up the area between the two decrease stitches well enough.

I solved the problem by repairing: I threaded a small loop of yarn at the bottom of the ladder, and, with a small crochet hook, created a new stitch between the decreases by looping up the rungs of the ladder, then same way you would pick up a dropped stitch.

This is not the pattern for you if you have a mental block about grafting, as you graft the entire seam from cuff to toe!  It took about an hour per sock seam.  It was a little unnerving to go along on blind faith, since you can't really try on the sock until the seaming is done, but then - voila! - the moment of trying it on is very satisfying.

My husband says these socks look like lizard skin!