Year-Old Socks and Double Round Looms

I had a question a while back about the blue socks I knitted in December of 2006.

Those socks were knitted toe-up using Wool-Ease in the "Denim Twist" color until I almost ran out, at which point I started alternating rounds with the "Blue Mist" color. When the "Denim Twist" finally ran out, I finished using just "Blue Mist". The camera picks up the transition much better than my eye.

I knitted these with my usual no-pattern sock formula, toe up until I got to the instep, a turned heel on more than 50% of the stitches, then 2-2 spiral ribbing that I learned from the Mary Thomas books, where she recommends using spiral ribbing for heelless "bed socks". (Wow, three pairs of doubled letters in one word!)

It's under "Spiral Knitting" on page 230 in Mary Thomas's Knitting Book, with a photo on p.229, and is described briefly and charted on page 38 of Mary Thomas's Book of Knitting Patterns.

Spiral ribbing is easy and very stretchy. I usually use it for the entire cuff, because I have to get the sock cuff over my 12+ inches of heel and not have it sag and bag around my ankle.

You can turn any ribbing into spiral ribbing. What you do is, you take your rib, say K2, P2 (or K3 P1 or whatever rib you like), and you knit three or four rows. Then you bump it over by one stitch, and knit the same number of rows.

In words, that's:
Row 1: *K2, P2*, repeat for 4 rows
Row 2: *K1, P2, K1*, repeat for 4 rows
Row 3: *P2, K2*, repeat for 4 rows
Row 4: *P1, K2, P1*, repeat for 4 rows.

You can knit both socks the same way, or you can make them spiral opposite directions. If you're using dpns, you can bump the rows on each needle the same direction or different directions, giving you V-shapes or A-shapes where the two needles meet. Or if you have an idea how many rows your sock cuff will be, you can make X or diamond shapes.

What I really like is that I don't have to keep count of rows. I can just count how many times the rib has moved over. It makes it easy to keep track of which sock is ahead as I knit the pair.

The other question was about the round double frames shown in the photo from this post. What did I knit on them? I made a hat similar to this hat.

And now a pile of library books is calling my name.