Alba sock is here!

Alba is next on my sock tour through the wonderful characters of Jane the Virgin. She took time to grow on me, given that her role in the first season was to encourage Jane (and, through flashbacks, Xiomara) to give birth to children they might not have wanted at the time. Of course, a show this woke and nuanced wouldn’t leave her a one-dimensional character, and as she grew on me her continued arguments just gave other characters in the show the chance to argue the opposite side of the issue, so it all worked out!

For this pattern, I thought of what kind of socks Alba might like to wear. Something sturdy and comfortable - hence the princess sole and EOP heel - with just a little bit of fun. Once I knew I wanted to do a princess sole, I knew I’d need a pattern worked on a field of purls so there wouldn’t be an abrupt change between the sole and instep of the sock. I also knew that I didn’t actually want to do all that purling.

I settled on a pattern that uses a “long stitch;” except, if you google instructions for “long stitch” you’ll get something different from what my stitch dictionary says. To further complicate matters, I flipped the pattern around, so you’re actually doing a “purl long stitch.” Not to worry, though! It’s not a difficult stitch to work, even purling it, and I have a photo tutorial in the pattern since I couldn’t find any existing source to link to.

The heel flap took some noodling to get it to look right, since I had to think about everything backwards in order to get the pillow-y textured side you’re accustomed to facing out once the knitting was done and the socks were turned right side out. My prototype sock experienced a LOT of ripping and reknitting!

I should also say that the original sample I made was in the color I’d really like to have used for the pattern photos - a deep teal reminiscent of Alba’s dressier outfits (Knit Picks Stroll Tweed - Marine Heather). But, it’s nearly impossible to get nice photos of dark yarn during a dark Seattle winter (plus, I made some mistakes on the leg of that sock…) so I ended up reknitting the pattern in a lighter yarn (Miss Babs Hot Shot - Ocean Breeze) so I could get photos more easily. At least I could get some deep stash on the needles!

Alba is 15% off, no code needed, for one week! Subscribers to my mailing list get a code for 30% off - scroll down to subscribe.

Xiomara sock is here!

I’ve been looking forward to this announcement for months! If you’ve never seen the show Jane the Virgin, first, you gotta check it out. (I watched it on Netflix.)

Not only is the show itself great, combining high-drama telenovela plot points with extremely relevant and social commentary, but the color palette is to die for (to dye for??). Every episode is a feast for the eyes with bright corals and oranges contrasted beautifully against a range of teals and blues.

I couldn’t stop thinking about all the different colors, and my natural inclination when trying to translate some inspiration into knitting design is to go to a sock pattern! Thus, the Jane the Virgin sock series was born.

The first sock in the series is inspired by Xiomara. She wears a lot of bright colors and geometric patterns and is no stranger to flirty dresses. I figured a sock design inspired by her would be in a loud color and have plenty of bling. It needed to be something as fun as her personality!

I went stash-diving and came up with some Scientific Sock from NanoStitch Labs in the red-orange colorway Rachel Carson. Thanks to a bead-buying blitz last year in preparation for Sock Madness, I already had some shiny silver seed beads on hand. I had originally planned to include a LOT more beads in the texture pattern on the instep, but had to abandon that idea when I realized…I love the look of beads don’t like beading that much! Thus, the beaded cuff was born. Once you get those beads done and out of the way, it’s just cables that flow into a point and some easy texture in between.

It’s important to me to provide both charts and written instructions, but as it turns out, having all those charts created a LOT of written text! With that in mind, please don’t panic when you see the page count on this pattern. I usually print my knitting patterns out so I can carry them around with me, and I have Opinions about what type of patterns are easiest to print, so I collected the written instructions for each size into their own sections rather than mixing them all together. Hopefully that makes it easier to decide which pages to print and saves you paper and ink.

Because of the many charts, adjusting the size of this pattern would be more complicated than simply adding X number of stitches for an additional repeat, so I created a spreadsheet that should do the math for you! It has the option of adding calf decreases should you need it. I created it in Google Sheets and tried to protect all of the cells except for the ones you need to enter your information in the hopes of avoiding any accidental editing. (As it turns out, you can’t upload Excel files to Ravelry.) I learned a lot about the limitations of Excel and Sheets this week.

Xiomara is 15% off for its first week, no code needed! If you’d like to find out about the rest of the socks in this series and get subscriber-only discounts, please join my mailing list.

Diana Headband is here!

Ever since seeing the most recent re-imagining of Wonder Woman (the 2018 Gal Gadot movie), I’ve been thinking about how cool her updated tiara and wrist cuffs looked. I became obsessed with the idea of making a headband/earwarmer pattern that would evoke the front plate of her tiara and spent a lot of time fooling around with fingering weight swatches until I realized that it would be much simpler to just do cables in worsted weight! Fortunately I had some lovely bronze-colored Wool of the Andes leftover from a previous project and was able to start designing right away.

One of the things that initially slowed me down was trying to be too faithful to the original tiara, at the cost of what would work best for the actual knitting. It took a lot of ripping and reknitting before I had a pattern that felt fun and intuitive to knit, while still evoking the original inspiration. I hope others think so too!

Now that I’ve got it out in the world, I’m back to noodling on a matching pair of wristers to complete the cold weather set. Get ready for…more i-cord.

Diana Headband is available in my ravelry store.