Red sox

In the post about my trip to the north I showed a picture of “leppar”, or insoles as I now know they’re called in English. Some of you were wondering about their usage, and luckily I did take a picture in a museum in Reykjavík which illustrates it rather well. Back in the days, people in Iceland (and maybe elsewhere, I don’t know) used to wear shoes that were made out of sheepskin. Inside those they would put the insoles to better insulate against the cold and rocky ground.

In Sheila McGregor’s Traditional Scandinavian Knitting there is a pattern for garter stitch insoles with a pretty motif knitted in. Since I’ve now mentioned this book there is one thing I just have to say. In the small section on knitting in Iceland there is a rather unfortunate mistake that every time I read the text makes me feel uncomfortable. Part of the traditional costume in Iceland is a cap that lookes like this

(This is my great grandmother’s, and it’s knitted as it usually was in the old days, now it’s often made of fabric.) This cap is called “skotthúfa”, but in Sheila’s book the name has been misspelled as “skothúffa” and she discusses whether the “skot” part could indicate a connection between Scotland and knitting in Iceland. It is true that Scotland is called “Skotland” and Scotsmen (is that the right word?) are “Skotar” in Icelandic. However, the name of the cap is, as I wrote above, “skotthúfa” and here the double-t is of crucial importance since “skott” means tail. The actual meaning of the cap’s name is thus “tail-cap” because it’s a cap with a tail as the picture clearly shows! :-)

Aaaaanyways. Since I’ve been back in Helsinki I have had a monogamous relationship with a sock. I have seen nothing but the sock for the entire past week and this resulted in me actually finishing a pair of socks in 6 days . I think that’s pretty good, but I have no idea what’s the average out there. As a note I do work full-time, so don’t judge me ;-)

The sock pattern was a standard one using 64 stitches, but the overall look came out of my head. The small colorwork pattern I saw on a mitten from my great grandma. The leg part is a bit on the short side, and since the colorwork part is highly inelastic it’s a tiny bit difficult to get them over the ankle. Nothing serious, but next time I might make them higher and wider and shape them a bit.

 

I tried out two different toe shapings. The ting is that I’m not a big fan of the standard wedge toe. There’s just something about that thick bar of stitches on either side that doesn’t sit right with me. On the right toe I therefore switched the k2tog and ssk decreases which makes only 2 central stitches as opposed to the 4 sts on the wedge toe. On the left toe I skipped the central stitches entirely by doing ssk at the end of a needle and k2tog at the beginning. I really like that, just having a “seam line”, but since it’s difficult to keep tension at the end and beginning of a needle, there is a small gap in the seam. Next time I’ll try again with one central stitch.

 

Are you still awake? :-)