I'm Working on a Project: Jellyroll Socks: Finished

After finishing the socks I made for my mom for Christmas, I decided to make a scrappy pair using all the miscellaneous yarn I had left from the last few projects: leftover neon pink, leftover neon yellow, and leftover half black half rainbow. After seeing my friend Barb make this pattern I fell in love with the nested rolled cuffs. Back in the 80s we used to wear stacked slouch socks in multiple colors with our stirrup leggings (all the rage in third grade). I remember my mom getting mad because it meant so many pairs of socks in the wash. Anyway, I loved this contemporary update and since I had so many little bits of 80s-inspired neon colors, I thought it was propitious. I also liked that they were ankle socks- we're entering the 3/4 length legging season and my regular knit socks look a bit funny with those, so I was glad to make a shorter pair. Of course lately I'm not wearing socks at all (one of the few benefits of being home is that I haven't worn any shoes but flip-flops for days-even to walk the dog).

The pattern is called Jelly Rolls, and you can find it here on ravelry. It's an easy to follow clear pattern. I was using it as "idiot knitting" and part of the reason I finished them recently is because they were easy to work on while on the many zoom meetings I've been attending recently.

These knit from the cuff down and you knit each cuff separately and then knit them together. I knit both socks at the same time like I always do, but there are a couple of places where the color changes aren't in exactly the same spot because some of my little leftover bits ran out at weird spots. Here I am looking dorky knitting together two sets of cuffs. Becky took this picture early in March, the last weekend we were together in person before the stay-at-home orders started rolling in.

I usually knit sock using a no heel turn method, and this is the first pair I knit that were cuff down. I somehow managed to skip over the part about the heel flap and went straight to the heel turn. I couldn't figure out how to pick up stitches, and had brief argument with my mother who thought I really probably did need a heel flap and I was sure this pattern didn't have one. Of course sure enough I did need a heel flap and wound up ripping out all the short rows in the heel turns. Sigh. And then I picked up the heel stitches backwards. I'm not sure where I went wrong but it meant I had to purl the whole foot.

I was so excited, this was all the yarn that was left! I feel like there's almost always a weirdly small leftover ball you can't do anything with or you run out three rows from the end.