Portal Socks Pattern

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Now you’re knitting with portals. 

There’s a bit of rambling, so if you want the pattern without the prose, just skip down to the end.

Back in my TF2 days, when I worked in at a terrible job and had a generally bleak existence, I had a philosophy. I was making enough money to live comfortably, plus have some left over. I hardly ever spend money on myself—I struggle with guilt and self-worth, apparently. The constant negativity and getting yelled at and crushing dreams at my job kept me from feeling like a human being. I found release in playing Team Fortress 2 for many, many hours, and in doing small things for other people whenever I could.

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Ok, not as many hours as some people, but that’s nothing to sneeze at. 

Sometimes bigger things when I was having a particularly bad day. Thus started my ritual of buying a friend and/or regular on my TF2 server a game from their Steam wish list when I had a terrible day. I felt like I was taking a bad situation and turning it into a net positive one.

Then I got a little tired of TF2, and the server fell apart, and I started playing Guild Wars 2 and stopped buying games for people all the time. I could still be nice, and help people out in Guild Wars 2, but the gift-giving sort of fell to the wayside. Things got worse at my job until the stress started seriously affecting my physical health, and I had to quit out of self-preservation.

After that, things started getting better. I took some time to de-stress. I talked to a counselor about my anxiety and depression. I found a new job that I like and am good at where no one yells at me. And I’ve felt like giving, again. Not for karma or universal balance or to preserve my mental and emotional health, but because I want to. I want to live in a world where people help each other, where it’s not bizarre for someone to give a present to a stranger just because.

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Well, it turns out I am not alone in that. There are thousands of people out there who feel the same. And they’re doing it via the power of the internet.

Redditgifts. You can sign up for a gift exchange and send people gifts and get gifts sent to you. They made up a holiday to celebrate so they can have 2 major gift-giving holidays during the year: Christmas and Arbitrary Day. I decided to sign up for the Arbitrary Day exchange, since it was temporally convenient. I was incredibly excited about it.

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I got my match. He loves music, especially hip hop and some electronica, baseball, ‘nerdy things’ and crazy designed socks. I know nothing about hip hop—my last experience with rap was when I was in elementary school and was somehow exposed to the Notorious B. I. G., Lil’ Kim, and Coolio. Not exactly my area of expertise. Also sports: no good. ‘Nerdy things’—ok, I like some nerdy things, yes. Rather a lot of them, actually. But that is very vague, and there are a ton of nerdy things out there that I know very little about. So, basically I have crazy designed socks. That is something I can work with.

I asked him what his favorite nerdy things were. He replied with Marvel comics, which narrows down the field, but not really beneficially, Batman, and Valve video games.

Aha! I also like Valve video games (see the above mention of the many hours of TF2), and even know some things about them. Portal is especially awesome, and particularly iconic! Great for socks, I bet! Who wouldn’t want Portal socks? I sure would, except for the whole not wearing socks thing. My feet are claustrophobic, the poor things.

I thought of doing a pattern of portals all over the socks. It would look cool, but it wouldn’t really capture the spirit of the game. I had to think with portals. So I came up with a simple and not terribly original idea. Orange portal on one sock, blue portal on the other. Person going in one side and out the other. Just like all the art for the game. And, since socks often have stripes which are actually rings, why not use that?

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The pattern for the form of the sock was loosely based on a sock pattern I found on Ravelry. It’s a very simple, basic sock pattern, and I modified it a bit and changed it to a basic stockinette stitch. It’s about as bare-bones as you can get when knitting a sock. It’s a toe-up pattern using Judy’s Magic Cast On, which I like because I don’t like seams around my toes, even though I know how to rock a kitchener stitch.  I used double pointed needles, because I love them and they look dangerous when you are using them, but doing that thing with a large circular needle for socks 1 or 2 at a time also works great.

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They’re so pointy!

There is some very basic color work (which is to say, switching colors for the toes and heels and one small part of the ankle for the portal’s ring). I thought of doing a more actual color work pattern for the person going into and out of the portal, but found that it messed with the tension. I decided to just ‘embroider’ the pattern on after, which turned out great. It was my first time doing that kind of ‘embroidery’, but I learned a lot time ago how to follow the yarn through the stitches, so it wasn’t hard. You can hardly tell I cheated.

This is a sock for a man’s sized foot, so keep that in mind. It might be a little big for the ladies and therefore it might need modification to fit on a woman’s foot. I have large feet for a woman and made them to be a little longer than my feet, since they’re going to a guy, but that’s easy to adjust. The stockinette stitch has a lot of lateral give.

The Pattern

Materials I Used:

1 skein Universal Yarn’s Uptown Worsted in Glowing Orange

1 skein Universal Yarn’s Uptown Worsted in Turquoise

1 skein Caron’s Simply Soft in a light to medium heathered grey color that matches the bleak grey of the Portal environment

A small amount of worsted weight black yarn of some kind

Size 5 dpns (3.75mm)

Yarn needle

Instructions:

Using Judy’s Magic Cast On and turquoise yarn, cast 16 stitches onto the dpns (8 on each side).

R1: Knit around, distributing the stitches equally across 4 dpns as you go. (16 stitches)

R2: Knit first stitch front and back, knit across next 6 stitches, knit next 2 stitches front and back, knit across next 6 stitches, knit last stitch front and back. (20 stitches)

R3: Knit around. (20 stitches)

R4: Knit first stitch front and back, knit across next 8 stitches, knit next 2 stitches front and back, knit across next 8 stitches, knit last stitch front and back. (24 stitches)

R5: Knit around. (24 stitches)

R6: Knit first stitch front and back, knit across next 10 stitches, knit next 2 stitches front and back, knit across next 10 stitches, knit last stitch front and back. (28 stitches)

R7: Knit around (28 stitches)

R8: Knit first stitch front and back, knit across next 12 stitches, knit next 2 stitches front and back, knit across next 12 stitches, knit last stitch front and back. (32 stitches)

R9: Knit around (32 stitches)

R10: Knit first stitch front and back, knit across next 14 stitches, knit next 2 stitches front and back, knit across next 14 stitches, knit last stitch front and back. (36 stitches)

R11: Knit around (36 stitches)

R12: Knit first stitch front and back, knit across next 16 stitches, knit next 2 stitches front and back, knit across next 16 stitches, knit last stitch front and back. (40 stitches)

R13: Knit around (40 stitches)

R14: Knit first stitch front and back, knit across next 19 stitches, knit next stitch front and back, knit across last 19 stitches. (42 stitches)

R15: Knit around (42 stitches)

Switch to grey.

R16-58, or until sock is 2 inches shorter than its desired length: Knit around (42 stitches)

Heel: You will be working only half of the stitches, in a back and forth pattern (as opposed to around, as you have been). It’s something called the short rows heel method and involves wrapping stitches. On the first row, you will knit 20 stitches, wrap one, and turn. The 21st stitch is the “last stitch” for Row 1. On the second row, you will purl 19, wrap one, and turn, and so on, so you have a decreasing number of stitches for each row.

Row 1: Knit to the last stitch, wrap last stitch and turn.

Row 2: Purl to the last stitch, wrap the last stitch and turn.

Row 3: Knit to the last stitch before the wrap, wrap that last stitch before the wrap and turn.

Row 4: Purl to the last stitch before the wrap, wrap that last stitch before the wrap and turn.

Repeat Rows 3 and 4 until there are 5 unwrapped stitches left. You should have just finished a purl row at that point. Then start unwrapping the stitches:

Row 1: Knit across to the first wrapped stitch, pick up the wrap and knit it together with the stitch that it was wrapping. Then wrap the next stitch–which will now have two wraps–and turn.

Row 2: Purl across to the first wrapped stitch, pick up the wrap and purl it together with the stitch that it was wrapping. Then wrap the next stitch–which will now have two wraps–and turn.

Row 3: Knit across to the first wrapped stitch, pick up the 2 wraps and knit them both together with the stitch that they were wrapping (knit 3 together). Then wrap the next stitch–which will now have two wraps–and turn.

Row 4: Purl across to the first wrapped stitch, pick up the 2 wraps and purl them both together with the stitch that they were wrapping (purl 3 together). Then wrap the next stitch–which will now have two wraps–and turn.

Continue unwrapping stitches until you have unwrapped them all, ending with a purl row that will bring you back to the beginning of the round.

R59: With grey, knit around. (42 stitches)

R60-98: Knit around. (42 stitches)

Switch to turquoise.

R99-101: With turquoise, knit around. (42 stitches)

Switch back to grey.

R102-104: With grey, knit around (42 stitches)

R105-114: *Knit 1, purl 1* around (42 stitches)

Bind off.

Knit the other sock the same way, using orange yarn instead of turquoise.

Weave in ends.

Using yarn needle and black yarn, following the natural path and tension of the yarn through the stitches, embroider the pattern onto the socks as shown. BE CAREFUL, make sure the socks and patterns are oriented correctly so that you get the right affect.

The orange sock is the left sock and the blue sock is the right sock, and the pattern is going up the outside of the left sock into the orange ring with the head toward the front of the sock.

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Pattern for the orange sock.

The blue sock is the right sock, and the pattern is going down the outside of the right sock out of the blue ring with the head toward the front of the sock.

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Pattern for the blue sock.

Check and double check with the picture. Weave in ends of the black yarn.

The end!

You may be able to tell that it is not exactly what I did with my pattern. I made extra increases around the ankle area of the sock (which ended up being completely gratuitous and making the sock baggier than I had wanted). I also used a k2, p2 rib at the top of the socks, but I would do the k1, p1 rib if I had to do it over again.

I hope you like the pattern. Please let me know if there are any errors or issues. And don’t sell the pattern or the socks, please. That would be silly. 

Notes

  1. i-havenothingelsetopost reblogged this from aroacevaljean
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  3. spaghetticrochet reblogged this from theknitdragon and added:
    Absolutely in love!
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