Itsenäisyyspäivä Sukat

There's nothing quite like a deadline to motivate the stitches to get moving.

I'd had some blue and white self-striping sock yarn for quite a while, with the thought of turning it into knee-high socks. Blue and white are the Finnish national colours, so what better way to celebrate the Finnish National Day than with some self-made Finnish socks?

Pattern: Knee-high Socks
Designer: Mary Jo Hamilton
Source: Society Socks
Needles: 2.25mm bamboo and 1.5mm metal dpns
Yarn details:

• Schachenmeyr Nomotta Regia Nation Colour
• 75% new wool, 25% nylon
• 50 grams = 210 metres
• colour #395
• 115 grams used

Even though the finished socks weigh 115 grams, there's not that much yarn left over from my original four balls because I had to do lots of snipping of colours to get the socks to match.

The pattern came from a sock designer called Mary Jo Hamilton. I can't remember exactly where on her website I found the information, but she had a knee-high sock pattern available upon request, so I emailed her and she was kind enough to send me the pattern. From memory, the reason why I chose the pattern was because it used the exact same yarn as I had, and the calf size was adjustable.

Getting the heel right was a real challenge, and finding a good calf size wasn't too easy, either. In the process, I ended up knitting at least three socks because of all the frogging.

The deadline of the 6th of December was looming large and I was having so much trouble with the heel...it was a close call, but after switching the panic button to ON, I finished them off at about ten o'clock on the evening before the celebrations.

They stay up on my legs really well and cope with maching washing perfectly. If I were to make them again, I would have fewer stitches on the foot part, as they're a little loose for my liking.