G. Knerd

I wish sometimes that I lived in Germany.  Not, mind you, that I know much German, but I think I could pick it up pretty quickly, and I know that enough people in Germany speak English that I could definitely get by.  Germany is where the sock yarn comes from, and is the only place I know of where you can get Soccer (aka Football) team inspired colorways in your sock yarn.

I bought this in Germany when I was touring Europe after college, and lucked out because the Soccer Team yarn was apparently last year’s style and was all on clearance – I scored this one for Portugal as well as some yarn for Germany, Denmark, and Brazil, and all on a former college kid’s budget (or lack thereof).

The ball looks a little rough, since it’s been marinating in my stash for almost five years and has already been through one failed attempt to become socks.  This time around, I’m going with something that I’m pretty sure will look awesome with just about anything:

A slightly modified version of Hourglass.  Basically, I changed the cuff to k1tbl p1 rib, added another repeat around to make them fit my feet, change the heel to my standard pseudo auto-heel, modified how the pattern edges work on the instep, and changed the toe to my standard smooth-decreases-around one.  But other than that I followed the pattern as written – oh, except that I moved the flower medallions inside the arches up a row so that they were more centered between the curves, rather than what was obviously written to be knitted flat with the YOs happening on the same row as the moving stitches.

Okay, so maybe these are more inspired by Hourglass instead of actual implementations of Hourglass.  Still, I love this pattern.  It’s saved me before from a failed attempt at sock creation, and as I’ve said before it knits up super quick.  I’m not sure why when it’s got plenty of fiddly one stitch cables and most of the stitches are purls, but there you have it.  Fast, fun, works with all yarn patterns, comfortable to wear, and interesting to look at.  You couldn’t dream up a better pattern if you tried.

Then again, I’ve only tried it with a tweedy solid, a marl, and now stripes.  It might not work on insane yarn…but even if it didn’t, I would still love it for all the other places it can be used.  And, really, who can blame a pattern for not looking good when used with a yarn that looks like clowns conspired to make us all sick?