My husband and I got away for a weekend to a place I’ve wanted to see since I was a child. Which made it a loooonggg time coming.

Mackinac Island is 3.8 miles of of heaven in Lake Huron between Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas. It doesn’t allow cars, which makes it my kind of place. Conveyance is by foot, bicycle, or horse-drawn carriage. Percherons with hooves as large as platters haul supplies, baggage and people all over the island. The horses were kind of tuckered out by the end of the season, and most get shipped off the island to rest over the winter.

Showing off his considerable travel planning skills, my husband booked us into the Grand Hotel. It lives up to its name! The architecture, service and decor are beyond compare. One of its claims to fame is that major portions of the movie Somewhere in Time were filmed there. We rented it before we left. Even though it was very sappy, and I kept saying “I won’t cry, I won’t I won’t I won’t” I did anyway at the end.

We stayed in a gorgeous room overlooking the lake. One afternoon we watched a storm brew up, then send sideways sheets of water past our window. As wimpy Californians, we are profoundly impressed by such dramatic acts of nature.

When I wasn’t ogling weather or horses, I did get a bit of knitting in. I’m working on a pair of socks for my friend Madeline. The Grand’s front porch is the largest in the world. It takes a lot of rocking chairs to fill up 600+ feet of veranda. I took the sock there for a visit.

I felt a little silly photographing the sock in the hotel’s fabulous Parlor, with its lush design and sophisticated mural. But I sacrificed my dignity in order not to lose sight of AudKnits being a knitting, not a travel, blog. But still, if you get the chance to visits Mackinac Island, by all means go. Oh yeah, don’t forget your knitting.

Just (barely) in time for Christmas knitting, I have finished designing the Christmas Smock Top Socks. This is what the Mystery Sock decided it wanted to become. I love the way the smocking stitch lends a quilted, cozy look to the sock’s cuff. It took some trail and error to come up with the right number of stitches and rows to form an appealing look once the cuff is stretched out over the leg. I’m happy with how the proportions turned out.

I chose Regia 4-ply sock yarn for its crisp stitch definition. In the pattern I call for 9 sts per inch rather than the 7.5 sts on the ball band. I just hate walking around on too-loose knitting. It feels like some kind of couture torture involving twine! At 9 sts per inch, the Regia make a smooth, kind-to-the-feet fabric.

The sock is knitted from the cuff down. An important design consideration was that the cuff must be knit flat so the smocking’s horizonal bars meet up properly. Trying to knit the cuff in the round wouldn’t work because the rounds are really spirals. The “rows” would never match up.

Once the cuff is completed, the yarn is joined and the rest of the sock is knitted in the round. I hid some ribbing under the cuff to make sure the sock stays up through all the Christmas day festivities.

If you like the way Christmas Smock Top Socks truned out, you may want to check out the Pattern Store.

…and red. I just love Christmas, which may explain the Mystery Sock’s morphing into a holiday design. Jimmy the Vicious Attack Cat doesn’t care about seasonal matters. He’s just glad to have a project to curl up near.

So I’m working on a new sock pattern. For now I’m just calling it the Mystery Sock, since it’s a mystery to me why I can’t get the design written faster.

I’m using Regia 4-Ply. I am SUCH a stickler for sock soles, I always end up knitting on a smaller needle than called for to get a tighter fabric. There’s nothing worse than taking the time to knit a sock, then have it feel like you’re walking around on twine when you wear it. 

The ball band for Regia 4-ply indicates 7.5 st per inch. But even at 8 st the weave seemed too loose for me. So I stuck a stitch marker in my work, reduced the needle size, and got 9 st per inch. You can see that the stitches to the right of the marker have that “stringy” look, while the fabric to the left looks nice and smooth, like something your feet will appreciate.

Knitters should be able to obtain this gauge on #1 needles. As I work through the design process, I hope that when people knit up my patterns their feet will be glad for the tighter gauge I suggest.

This is where it all started. I suppose I could have put an end to it at the first hint that I was going to get obsessed. Again. But I ignored that inner voice which cried “Stop while you can!”

Three skeins of Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock yarn. That’s all it took. (Plus a visit from my friend Mary, who has so much creativity that apparently she left some behind for me when she went back to Ohio.)

I didn’t mean to design a sock. I certainly didn’t mean to design anything in fair isle. But the shmooey yarn with bright spring colors drew me in and demanded I grab some needles. A design snuck into my mind as if it were a gremlin….  

With the help of the Stitch & Motif Maker software, here’s how the swatching process evolved for Mary’s Garden Socks.

A lot of trail and error, ripping out, starting over, and here is the final product:

 At a later date I’ll post more on the Stitch & Motif Maker, but you can imagine how helpful it is to be able to plan this sort of design out on a just-the-right-proportion grid.

If you like this sock you can find it my Original Designs in my Pattern Store. I find knitting it to be a nice dose of fair isle fun, and I hope you do to!