Birthday socks

My granddad turned 80 years old yesterday. Happy birthday to him! Of course I paid him a visit, and I ate more cake and waffles than I should have done. But they were good!

As a present, I knitted him some personal birthday socks. Since we call him ‘pepe Fons’, I made him socks that said just that.

And I added the number 80 as well.

For the characters, I just took out some checked paper and coloured the boxes to get the words and the numbers right. What I needed next, was a basic pattern for toe-up socks. I found a really great one, in Dutch. It comes with a table that gives you a clear overview of all measurements and stitches you need for each size and leaves you space to fill them in in the pattern as well, so you don’t need to check the table all the time. It uses a reinforced heel, which may be for the best for my granddad’s socks. Maybe that means less repair work for me, since I usually darn his socks.

To do the characters, I used intarsia. I know they say it cannot be done in the round, but I chose to browse the web and see whether that was true or not. And you know what, you can do intarsia in the round! You need to use yarn-overs and then knit those together again, and you do see a slight seam, but it works!