Holmes to my Watson

A couple of years ago, I knitted a pair of Elementary Watson socks for my dad, and they were a lot of fun to knit and turned out very nice.  When I had occasion to knit a pair of men's socks for another man in my life, I could have gone another route and tried something new, but as he is an avid Sherlock fanboy, I knew that these ones would be the right choice (again.)

I once again relied on the kindness of SweetGeorgia to supply me with a beautiful colour, this time a fairly solid slate grey, and went to work.  I went down a needle size, since I found them to be a bit biggish last time, at the recommended gauge.

Note to self: men's socks take ages, since their feet are even bigger than mine.

In the end, the socks are lovely and pretty perfect for the recipient, so hopefully he'll love them as much as I enjoyed knitting them.

Elementary Watson Socks

These socks are part of the blog-post backlog (backblog?) that I need to catch up on. A while back my dad started hinting about socks. Of course I have a long-standing selfish knitter reputation to keep up, but even I couldn't say no. I rarely get asked to make something by the men I love, so when given the chance, I do it.


Coincidentally, I had found a nice men's sock pattern that I was eager to try out. These socks are inspired by a sweater worn by Mr. Watson (aka my beloved Martin Freeman) in the new Sherlock tv series from the UK. There have been some amazing knockoff sweaters knit by some awesome bloggers I have serious girl crushes on, but I didn't really want the full-sized sweater, myself. Socks seemed like a more reasonable tribute, to me, and with my Dad wanting socks, it was the perfect match. I ordered some Tough Love Sock yarn from Vancouver's Sweet Georgia Yarns in the Nightshade colourway and cast on.

I did use the opportunity to learn something new from this pattern - the Fleegle heel for toe-up socks - but after that, I made a couple of changes to the pattern (which you can't see because I'm not showing the leg, here.) After the heel, I didn't do the design on the back leg, but did k2p2 ribbing, instead. I wanted to ensure that the leg was comfortably fitted, and I decided that ribbing would do that better (plus the bonus of it being easier than adding more cables and stuff.) When it came time for the cuff, I carried on in the same ribbing in the back and changed the space above the flying geese motif to ribbing in the front. I carried on doing the cables just the same. It looks good (you'll have to trust me on that) and they fit my Dad really well. Success!