Baby socks free pattern. 12 - 18 months

It is getting colder and I'm knitting lots of stuff to make my Little Man ready for the winter. And some warm socks are a must-have thing, so I made a couple of pairs and can share the pattern with all of you.



So you will need a bit of sock yarn (4ply) and 2.5mm double pointed needles. What is sock yarn? It's quite thin, about 200m in 50g, and usually it has 75% wool (or more) and some nylon in it to make the socks stretchy and washable in the washing mashine (on mild wash still). You can use other yarns, of course, in fact if you use a thin DK yarn with the same size needles it will still give you the same size. Just check the gauge before you start :)

Gauge: 4 rows X 2.5 st = 1 X 1 cm

Abbreviations used:
st - stich
k - knit
p - purl
k2tog - knit 2 together
p2tog - purl 2 together
ssk - slip slip knit (here is the on video how to do that)

Cast on 32 stiches and divide them between 4 needles. You have to cast on really loosely, so I would adwise to cas on on two needles (just put them together and acst on as if they were one, then remove one of the needles and divide the stitches between four needles). There will be 8 st on each needle then. We'll work in rounds starting with the 1x1 rib.
Round 1: *k1, p1*, repeat from * to * till the end of the round.
Rounds 2 - 9: repeat round 1
Round 10: knit
Round 11 - 23: repeat row 10
then work only on first and second needle, which means - with 16 st. Take them to one needle and work in rows.
Row 24: knit 16, turn
Row 25: purl 16, turn
Row 26 - 33: repeat row 24-25.
Row 34: knit 11, ssk, turn
Row 35: take the first st off to the holding needle to the working needle (don't purl it!), purl 7, p2tog, turn
Row 36: take the first st off to the holding needle to the working needle (don't knit it!), knit 7, ssk, turn
Row 37: take the first st off to the holding needle to the working needle (don't purl it!), purl 7, p2tog, turn
Row 38: take the first st off to the holding needle to the working needle (don't knit it!), knit 7, ssk, turn
Row 39: take the first st off to the holding needle to the working needle (don't purl it!), purl 7, p2tog, turn
Row 40: take the first st off to the holding needle to the working needle (don't knit it!), knit 7, ssk, turn
Row 41: take the first st off to the holding needle to the working needle (don't purl it!), purl 7, p2tog, turn

And you'we done the heel!
Now you have 8 st on the heel. Take the first st off the holding needle to the working needle and knit that  7 remaining st from the top of the heel, then cast on 10st along the left side of the heel, knit the stiches from 3rd and 4th needle, cast on 10 st along the right side of the feel and knit 4 st from the top of the heel. Now you should have 14 st on the 1st needle (10 from the side of the heel and 4 from top of the heel), 14 st on the second (the same as on the first one), 8 st on the 3rd, 8 st on the 4th.

Now we'll start making the decreases as we need to have 8st on each needle and we have much more than that on the 1st and the 2nd needle. Remember that we just finished knitting the stitches from the first needle. Now we'll work in rounds again making the decreases in the beginning ot the 1st and in the end of the 2nd needle as follows:
Round 42: knit 12 st from the second needle, k2tog, knit st from the 3rd and the 4th needle
Round 43: ssk, knit 12 (first needle), knit 11, k2tog (second needle), knit 8 (3rd needle), knit 8 (4th needle).
Round 44: ssk, knit 11 (first needle), knit 10, k2tog (second needle), knit 8 (3rd needle), knit 8 (4th needle).
Round 45: ssk, knit 10 (first needle), knit 9, k2tog (second needle), knit 8 (3rd needle), knit 8 (4th needle).
Round 46: ssk, knit 9 (first needle), knit 8, k2tog (second needle), knit 8 (3rd needle), knit 8 (4th needle).
Round 47: ssk, knit 8 (first needle), knit 7, k2tog (second needle), knit 8 (3rd needle), knit 8 (4th needle).
Round 48: ssk, knit 7 (first needle), knit 8 (second needle), knit 8 (3rd needle), knit 8 (4th needle).
Now you should have 8 st on each needle.

Knit 24 more rounds with no decreases.

NB! This quantity of rows is calculated from the average lenght of baby foot at this age, which is 12.5 cm. But please note that all babies are different and some of them can have much smaller or bigger feet at the same age. For example, Little Man is only 11 months old, but his feet (well, the whole baby in fact) are quite big, exactly 12.5 cm. So, before you start knitting I would advise you to measure your baby's feet and adjust this part to your baby's actuall size by knitting more or less than 24 rows.

Then you need to start decreasing to form the toe:
Round 1: K2tog in the beginning and end of each needle (6st on each needle)
Round 2: knit
Round 3 - 4: repeat rounds 1-2 of the toe (4st on each needle)
Round 5: knit every two st together (2st on each needle)
Round 6: knit every two st together (1 st on each needle).
You will have 4 st left. Cut the yarn leaving 10cm long tail. Using the tapestry needle sew the last st together and hide the yarn ends.
Repeat for the second sock!

If you knit some socks using my pattern, please leave a link to the picture of your creation in comments. I'd love to see it :) And please let me know if you find any mistakes in the pattern too.

Two blog project. Stage two.

So, Kristina posted the second picture for our two blog project:

Actually, she posted it on the 5th of November and I just was too busy with baby stuff to repost and tell a bit more about it. This means I have to have the square done till the 26th of November.
As it's a swirl I allready have the idea of how to make it, just need to find the matching yarns. Probably it will be a bit tricky to follow the nice lines of the house roofs but I really want to try it as I like them, especially the big red one in the bottom.

At the moment I'm working on the new sock pattern, 12-18 months this time. Tomorrow I will test it and hopefully will be able to share it the same day. But it definetly needs some testing before posting it to the blog as I'm a bit worried about the details and want to make it really clear and easy to follow. So see you all tomorrow and get your needles ready in case you are in need of some baby socks :)

Baby Phoebe blanket and some news about my Little Man

Well, here I am again this Thursday morning to show you a baby blanket I made for a lovely baby Phoebe on her first birthday. Little Man was invited to her party but was ill that day (had a real Niagara waterfall from his nose) so we cold not go. And then it took me more than a month to actually meet Phoebe's mum Jenny and give her the blanket. And as I didn't want to show it before the little owner gets it I'm showing it only now despite it was finished in September.



Sorry for the picture quality, had to take them in the evening right before I gave the blanket away. I really wanted to make a picture of it outside, but the weather just didn't let me do it.
Here is a little close-up to show you the edging. I was using the tutorial from Attic24 for the edging and must say that it's a good way to finish a blanket. Looks nice and feminine, but not too feminine if you know what I mean.



For the squares I used a Squaring Big Circle tutorial from Signed With An Owl and I'm totally in love with this granny square. It's bright, it's fun and it looks really good. So no wonder I really like the result.
When I was crocheting this Little Man was trying to steal the blanket from me and ewerything I said about it beeing pink and girlish, so not for him, just didn't help. So I guess he liked it too.

By the way, if you are interested in Little Man, he is just fine and started walking two days ago. It doesn't mean that now he is walking all the time, as he is choosing between walking and crawling and since crawling is easier and faster he still prefers to crawl mos of the time. But when he is walking through the room hugging a teddy bear it just looks sooooo sweet! The only problem with taking a photo of it is that the moment Little Man sees a camera he goes back to crawling. Is he shy? Not shure about it yet but will try again and see if I can manage to make some pictures.
Here is how he looks now, little smiling boy: