Panel Sock Construction

I have been poking around at my library, as I have been hoping to knit a bit more from patterns I already have. One of the patterns that jumped out at me are the Rib and Panel Socks from Vogue Knitting on the Go: Socks Two. This pattern has a bunch of odd things though as I worked on it.

The first thing that was odd about it was the gauge. In something that only has stockinette and rib, a 54 stitch circumference sock was... interesting. Particularly when the pattern claims that it it is for a fingering weight yarn. Granted, the pattern called for Koigu, which has a bit of a oddly heavy gauge. I tend to think about it more as a sport weight.

After a failed start trying to find something of a heavier gauge that I would be happy with, I scrapped the whole thing and restarted with a more true fingering weight and 60 stitches, which I accomplished by changing the panel to be 20 stitches wide rather than what was suggested. Note: I have small feet and 60 stitches is fine, but if you were knitting this as a larger size you could alternately widen the panel or by adding an extra set of ribs to either side, if you are going to be increasing by an increment of 10 stitches.

The second odd thing has to do with the way the pattern was written. It seems to suggest that you can do the (essentially intarsia) panels in the round, which isn't actually possible for this pattern. A quick search on Ravelry though, shows that there was errata which have you knit the leg flat. Here is what mine looked like:

The third weird thing is that there are no projects for this pattern on Ravelry... Let me say that again. No one on Ravelry has made this pattern. There was one person who had posted to the forums looking into help making them, and she was the one to find the errata. But in the end there were no projects. Of course that only made me want to make it all the more.

I was very intrigued by the heel detail. I have to say I was particularly pleased when Salvbard asked that wasn't it a dutch heel. Clearly he is coming along well. I was so proud.

It is sort of like the dutch heel that I put in his black winter socks, but it had a wider band down the bottom of the heel and the back of the heel is done in a rib. Neat!

I made one last modification to the pattern. Instead of knitting the top of the foot (with a rib to either side of the panel) and then the bottom of the foot (with the gusset decreases) separate and them sewing them together with two seams, I knit it flat after the heel with a rib, the panel, and then a larger area that included both the side rib and the bottom of the sock. This meant that I needed two less stitches on the side that would no longer have a seam, so that it would be as symmetrical as possible at this point with the side that would be. I decreased one stitch on the side of the rib, and the other I made sure happened at the beginning of the heel gusset "rounds." Then I could knit the full circumference of the foot flat as one piece until the toe.

Hopefully any of that made sense, but I wanted to document everything in case someone else ended up being interested in making these as well.