These Are Going To Be So Cool: Tartan Argyles

I spent some time over the long weekend making charts.

I made a chart for my Tartan Argyle socks and I made a chart for some Polka Dot socks and I made a chart of the colors and amounts of yarn needed for the Landscape socks.

Despite all this charting, I made good progress on the Talking to Socks. I finished the first one, using a sewn bind off. And worked the second one through the heel turn and into the leg.

Aye, Lassie
You might remember, after the success of making the Pirate Arrrgyles, I was filled with a desire to make socks based on my (married) clan tartan.

My original plan was to do yellow socks with black diamonds and red diagonals. But after I finished the Pirate Arrrgyles and had an idea of how much yarn would be used, I decided to do red and black diamonds as I wasn't sure if I would have enough yellow, or something.

In a moment of panic last week I bought another skein of yellow, just to be safe.

Lesson Learned
The Pirate Arrrygles were based on a 56 stitch sock and the fit is good, but I don't like the way the stitches spread open. And I'm also displeased that the diagonals don't cross on the same rows were the diamonds come together. Of course, the last chart I made for them was my third attempt and I just wanted to start knitting already. I was determined not to make the same mistakes with the Tartan Argyles.

Chart This
To that end, the Tartan Argyles are based on 60 st. I arrived at that number in an arbitrary fashion. It was easy to divide up into even diamonds and for the heel flap. But I think the fit should still be ok.

I started out by finding the center of the sock, coloring those two squares on the first row black, and building the diamond from there.

In looking at other patterns and sites, I saw the widest point of the diamonds are usually half the number of the total stitches for the sock. So the center diamonds (the black and red ones down the front of the foot) start with two sts and are 30 sts across at their widest point, but the yellow ones are only 28 sts. Since the black & red ones are two rows deep at 30 sts they come together in a four stitch square and there isn't room for the yellow.

As I was charting, I realized the diamonds have to be as tall as there are wide, so they are 30 rows as well.

After I colored all the diamonds in, I found the center of the diamonds, colored the four stitches were the diagonals cross, and colored in the diagonals out from there. They all cross very nicely were and when they should. As it turned out, the diagonals both touch with two stitches on the first row.

(Actually, if I remember correctly, I colored in the first black diamond, but it wasn't 30 rows tall. Then I jumped straight to the diagonal, quickly realized it wouldn't cross correctly, and that is was helped me realize my diamonds weren't tall enough. They didn't have a good center.)

Because I can't do things the easy way, my diagonals are two colors—red on the black diamonds and black on the red diamonds.

As I said, these are going to be so cool. I want to drop everything and start them, but the time isn't right at the moment.

I hope all this information helps if you landed here because you were searching for how to make an argyle chart. I know when I did my Pirate Arrrgyles I was very frustrated because I saw people's charts, but not really directions on how to make my own. The charts I was finding weren't at the gauge or stitch count I needed for my little feet, so I had to wing it, and was too impatient to figure this stuff out the first time.