Cool Baseball Socks

[Solargirl]

I'm pleased as punch with these! These socks were actually one of the winners in the TNNA "Stitch 'n Pitch" knitting contest this summer, and rumor has it the pattern is supposed to be published soon in "Craft" magazine. (At least I darn well hope it gets published; I spent a month and 22 pages writing the darn thing!)

You'll notice I have socks from a couple of different teams (including the Colorado Rockies. Would you believe I finished the second sock just in time to wear to the tiebreaker that put them in the playoffs, and wore them to all games all the way through, including the World Series? I'd like to think the socks had something to do with them making it, although I'm still bummed about the Series loss...) I actually managed to finagle the pattern so that logos of 26 of the 30 MLB teams will work on the socks.

Not only that, but I designed a couple different ways of knitting the socks. One version is regular stranded knitting, which is fairly easy, but doesn't stretch much. The other version doesn't strand the contrast color behind the main color, and instead uses a technique called "festive knitting" (See Mary Thomas' book) so that the stripes with the logos can work in the round. Those are great, in that they're wonderfully stretchy, but "festive knitting" can take a little getting used to.

Well, I hope everybody likes these. I know I've enjoyed making them!