Twistedspinster

Random Number Cable Socks!

OK, by now it's obvious that I'm out of the running for any serious competition on Summer of Socks, and I'm not even going to get patterns written up.

But, I've done the Random Numbers Cable Sweater, and the concept is really easy to apply to socks too.

See the cables, how they go all over the place at irregular intervals? That's because the cables are random. Truly random, as in a random number generator, or a throw of the die. (that's the singular of dice, to make my mother the English teacher proud.)

I started out using a table of random numbers (just google "random number generator" and you'll find one), but that got to be too cumbersome. You need to keep track of the paper, and a pencil, and mark off the numbers...

Then I ran across a fancy die from my kids' fantasy gaming days. It's 10 sided, with numbers 1 through 9 and 0 (zero). Oh, goody!

hmm - you still don't get it? OK, I left out the "rules" I knit this by. Please know that you don't have to follow my rules. You don't even need to follow your own. (I don't!)

I started these socks with my usual knit an 8-stitch, 5 row rectangle, pick up stitches all around, then increase 4 sts at the corners, every other row. After a goodly amount of rows, I started a 2x2 ribbing over the top of the foot.

Then - and here comes the fun part - I use the die to tell me when to do the cables, and whether to do them right over left, or left over right.

If the die comes up:
1, 3 or 5 - then cable left
2, 4, or 6 - then cable right
7,8,9 or 0 - no cable, just plain knit.

I knitted for awhile, and decided the cables were a little too frequent. So, I randomly decided NOT to cable. It's all good. If you make a mistake - who's gonna know???

And as if that weren't cool enough - you can vary the rate of the cables to accent or vary whatever color you're on. See that wide section of red/orange stripiness? That little accent of frequent cables changes the color, doesn't it? Can I pretty please pretend that I did that on purpose? (big goofy grin here)

posted by Ruth S. @ 10:34 PM