U-Turn Socks, Cast-On

My third pair of socks from New Directions in Sock Knitting will be General Hogbuffer’s U-Turn design.

This ingenious construction begins with a provisional cast-on along the back of the leg. This section is worked back and forth in rows, during which the heel cup is shaped. Then stitches are cast on to fill in the panel along the front of the leg, which is attached to the existing back-of-leg stitches at the end of every row. At the ankle, the front leg and back leg stitches are joined and the foot is worked in rounds, with gusset shaping along the way.

The instructions call for working 4-row stripes from the two ends of a gradient yarn. I love the way the stripes define the different directions of knitting while adding interesting color play.

The socks in the book are knitted with a ball of Schoppel Wolle Zauberball Crazy. The closest gradient yarn that I have is Kauni in a very long gradient from yellow to light green to dark green, then back to light green and yellow. Because the color changes are so long and subtle, I’m worried that I might end up with like colors against each other if I work the stripe pattern from both ends of the same ball. To get the necessary contrast, therefore, I’m going to stripe the Kauni with Rauma Finullgarn in color #421, dark teal.

So far, I’ve provisionally cast-on 70 stitches for the back of the leg.