#the first pair were a cool design but the yarn doesn't have good stitch definition after a bit of wear

[kesbeacon]

I snagged four-five balls of fancy wool/silk/alpaca chunky yarn in a charity shop last year, and made myself some slipper socks. The problem was that they were that stupid fucking slipper sock concept where the sole is garter stitch knit in the round and sewn together under the foot? I didn't know better, having never made thick socks before, but now every time I see a garter stitch sole concept I'm judging the designer.

Garter stitch is basically zigzags, which causes two problems. One is that it stretches out making the sole immediately be misshapen the minute any strain or wear occurs. The other is that the bit of the stitches in contact with the ground wears down faster than the rest. I've had to extravagantly darn mine and they're not comfortable anymore.

So when I used the same yarn to make my partner a pair, I made them in a dead plain sock pattern except for the sole, which I purled. I've done this before, I don't think I posted the socks in question, but what it lets you do is use the purl bumps to structure a pre-emptive darning job without compromising the feel on the inside.

I know this yarn wears down easily if allowed to stick out (cough garter stitch sole), so I used a sturdy aran-weight 100% wool in cream to do up-and-down darning threads, and then a thinner wool/acrylic blend to go diagonally. I'll trim the loose ends down a bit when my partner's worn them more and they've felted together, but they're not troublesome even now.

If I'm doing colourwork socks, it's easy enough to hide the pre-emptive darning that I do on basically every sock I make these days in the floats, but without floats I don't actually like standing on purl bumps. Moving the purl bumps to the outside gives a nicer surface to stand on, and darning them means the nice yarn of the main sock is a little protected from the ground, with minimal outstanding bumps to wear away.

I should be able to make one more pair with this yarn...