When I was staying at my mom's this past summer, I spent some of the down-time in poking around the internet, as one does, for sock patterns, and -- in addition to the Hermione's Everyday Sock pattern which I chose to suit the yarn I had -- I came across Gladys by General Hogbuffer [sic] (who blogs here, though as you can see I am reluctant to put that into the past tense), which pattern went into the other pile, of those for which I don't (didn't) have yarn yet.
(Love this gusset!)
It isn't a new idea, I'm sure, to use gansey patterns on a sock, but this one is attractive in its combination of simplicity and complexity, and I had in fact just seen a display of Manos del Uruguay's Alegria sock yarn at a local yarn shop and thought it would work beautifully with the pattern, so I went back the next day and bought a skein -- this color is "Silver".
Mary Berry would certainly say this yarn is "scrummy"! It is a pleasure to knit with, beautifully soft, and has great stitch definition. (It comes in a ton of colors too, both solids and multi, so I'm looking forward to using it again, certainly on a scarf!)
The only modifications I made were to make it considerably longer than the original -- I like a long sock -- and to use a regular slip-stitch heel instead of continuing the pattern down to the heel turn. I did take the General's suggestion to cast on a larger number of stitches and decrease down after the ribbing -- since mine would be higher on the calf than the original, I put a third of the decreases after the ribbing, another third after the first rig-and-furrow section, and the rest after the second rig-and-furrow.
I'm delighted with the pattern and the resulting socks, so am putting some other House of Hogbuffer patterns on my to-do list -- certainly Onopordum and Maudie!
I'm very admiring of all of the lovely winter photos that are appearing on other blogs, so here is my contribution. It isn't much -- sigh! especially here on our former lawn -- but it has been wonderful this past week having rain. Lots of it! about three inches -- over 7 cm. -- and a nice, steady rain that didn't just fling itself into the storm drains and race away to the ocean, but stuck around and soaked in. Lovely!
At the beginning of the holiday season, I had one decrepit Schlumbergera that had collapsed under its own weight and cracked just above the soil level, thereby slowly starving itself, but I managed to save some cuttings and re-pot them -- white with pink throats. It didn't seem quite like Christmas without a Christmas cactus in bloom, and so rather impulsively I bought a new little one at the garden center -- red! -- and as it turned out, my mother-in-law potted up some cuttings from one of hers, and she gave that to me -- magenta!. So here they all are, outside on the walk to our front door, having a refreshing rainwater shower!
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