Corduroy Road Socks

When we were little we remember endless Sunday drives on dusty country roads. Remember the Sunday drive? Back before the energy crunch. The unpaved rural roads of our youth had a curious bump, bump, bump quality. They were called "corduroy roads" and were constructed in an ingenious manner......logs laid across the road bed and covered with gravel or dirt. They kept the roads from becoming muddy sink holes in the spring. If the light was right, you could even see the rolling ridges that looked very much like corduroy.

We thought of those roads when we began to plan these socks because we thought we'd like to use corrugated ribbing for the tops and that ribbing looks for all the world like....you guessed it.....corduroy.

These Corduroy Road Socks will be for Mr. Coco who needs some new socks for tennis, now that the tennis season is just about to begin. (We saw several robins in our yard this morning as well as one red-wing blackbird! Spring is close!)

Now, you may wonder about wool socks for a summer sport, but we've been assured there's nothing better. Wool keeps a foot dry and cushions it inside the shoe. Durable and comfortable, it's a good choice. The only difference in a tennis sock is that it must be close-fitting (so it doesn't smoosh around inside the shoe) and it must be short in leg length. No problem! Snug and short mean fewer stitches around and fewer rows in total and that means they're quicker to knit!

We have lots of wool to choose from but for tennis socks we like a cushy wool. We chose Patons Kroy Socks 4-ply. We're using FX in Camo Color as the main colour and Gentry Grey for the contrasting colour. We like our 3mm wooden needles, 5-inch-long Brittany Birch needles.

We used our absolute favourite sock cast-on, the Tubular Cast-on and worked a 2 by 2 corrugated ribbing for 2 inches. This Patons FX is very, very soft. We notice it's made in Turkey while the other ball which is older was made in Slovenia (and not quite so luxurious). We think we mentioned before that we had bought some Elann wool that was made in Turkey that was particularly soft while a second ball of Elann sock yarn made in Italy was quite noticeably not. Curious, no? (Note to self: Look for Turkish yarn in future.)

Corrugated ribbing is slightly less elastic than regular ribbing because of the floats. You can see them in this picture. We worked hard at keeping the floats nice and loose and even.

We switched to stockinette for the leg. We're just about to start the heel flap. Stay tuned. We're still obsessed with the heel flap. Grandma Coco thinks it's the most neglected part of sock anatomy yet.

We're linking up to the Needle and Thread Network this week for WIP Wednesday. There are a couple of other knitters on board although we're not sure if any will come out to play today. But there's lots of talent over there so be sure and click on over and see what everyone is up to.

~ Cheers!