Bitilasana Yoga Socks

Recently, a friend asked me to knit some yoga socks for her – she only specified the colors she wanted: black and fuchsia. So, first of all I went stash-diving and found that I had three yarns (in fingering weight) that would fit that color scheme – and then I thought about the design. As usual, I wanted something without any yarn cutting while knitting one piece. Unfortunately, I didn’t reach that specific goal but nevertheless, I quite like the look of these yoga socks.

This pattern describes how to do this in three colors. Of course you can adjust it and knit it only with one yarn or in two colors. I guess it would look interesting with some variegated sock yarn (and with one yarn you wouldn’t even have to break your yarn while knitting one sock :)

As to the name: the wavy lines reminded me of the cat-cow-sequence in yoga; and Bitilasana is the name for cow pose.

This work by Knitting and so on is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Materials

• a total of about 30 grams of fingering weight yarn in 3 colors
• 3 knitting needles (3mm), it’s best to use double pointed needles (e.g. one circular and one straight needle)
• a tapestry needle for grafting and to weave in ends
• scrap yarn for crochet provisional CO
• a crochet hook for crochet provisional CO

Techniques

• Provisional Cast-On: My preferred method of a provisional cast-on is the crochet provisional CO – as shown in this YouTube Video
• Grafting: Joni Coniglio has written a series on grafting (“5 Grafting Myths”) on the knitting daily blog. All her post can be found here: http://www.knittingdaily.com/author/joni-coniglio/).
  The techniques used here, can be found in this blog post.
• Here's a short (!) description of the grafting techniques used for this pattern:
• If you want to graft in garter stitch you can do it in two ways – depending on the way you hold your knitting and which yarn you’re using.
• (1) If you do it with your working yarn (in case of this pattern the needle you knitted your last row with is the front needle), you’d want to have the knit valley in front and the purl ridge on the back needle.
  Here the formula is (in short): Front needle: knit slip, purl leave; back needle: knit slip, purl leave
  Or spelled out: 
• First stitch: on front needle insert needle purlwise and leave stitch on the needle, on the back needle do the same 
• For all following stitches:
  Front needle: insert needle knitwise and slip stitch from needle, insert needle purlwise into the next stitch and leave the stitch on your needle
  Back needle: do the same, i.e. insert needle knitwise and slip stitch from needle, insert needle purlwise into the next stitch and leave the stitch on your needle
• (2) If you work with yarn that you kept when casting on your stitches (in case of this pattern, your front needle contains the stitches of the provisional CO), you’d want the purl ridge on the front needle and the knit valley on the back needle.
• Here is the formula in short: Front needle: purl slip, knit leave; back needle: purl slip, knit leave
• Or spelled out:
  First stitch: on front needle insert needle knitwise and leave stitch on the needle, on the back needle do the same
  For all following stitches:
  Front needle: insert needle purlwise and slip stitch from needle, insert needle knitwise into the next stitch and leave the stitch on your needle
  Back needle: do the same, i.e. insert needle purlwise and slip stitch from needle, insert needle knitwise into the next stitch and leave the stitch on your needle
• (3) If you want to decrease a stitch while grafting, you need to push the … needle through two stitches instead of one, both when it’s left on the needle, and when you’re about to slip it off.
  E.g. when you want to decrease a stitch on your front needle in the middle of a row in garter stitch:
• Front needle: insert needle knitwise and slip stitch (stitch before the decrease), insert needle purlwise through the next two stitches (the decrease) and leave on needle 
• Back needle: insert needle knitwise and slip stitch from needle, insert needle purlwise into the next stitch and leave the stitch on your needle
• Front needle: insert needle knitwise into the first two stitches (as if to k2tog) and slip from needle, insert needle purlwise into the next stitch and leave the stitch on your needle
• Back needle: insert needle knitwise and slip stitch from needle, insert needle purlwise into the next stitch and leave the stitch on your needle

Gauge and What to Measure
Before starting to knit measure the circumference of your ankles. You will be asked to knit until you have reached half of that circumference.

General Construction
The picture below shows the general construction. You start with half of the intended lenght of the sock for the first provisional CO. Then you knit half of the sock's circumference and afterwards provisionally CO the other half of the intended stitches. The part that is knitted next is used to cover the back of the foot and the front part of your ankles (wide part in the middle).
When this is finished, the first provisional CO is grafted to the upper stitches creating the first tube of your sock. Then you continue in another narrow strip of horizontal ribs and finish with a second graft to complete the second part of the tube.

Instructions

Lower narrow part

With scrap yarn provisionally CO22 sts, leave a tail long enough to graft and knit the first row with colour 1.
With color 2:
Row 1 (RS): k1, * kfb k2, ssk, k2tog, k2, kfb, repeat from * until there is only one stitch left
Row 2 (WS): k all
With color 3:
Row 3 (RS): k1, * kfb k2, ssk, k2tog, k2, kfb, repeat from * until there is only one stitch left
Row 4 (WS): k all
With color 1:
Row 5 (RS): k1, * kfb k2, ssk, k2tog, k2, kfb, repeat from * until there is only one stitch left
Row 6 (WS): k all
With color 2:
Row 7 (RS): k1, * kfb k2, ssk, k2tog, k2, kfb, repeat from * until there is only one stitch left
Row 8 (WS): k all
With color 3:
Row 9 (RS): k1, * kfb k2, ssk, k2tog, k2, kfb, repeat from * until there is only one stitch left
Row 10 (WS): k all
Repeat rows 5 to 10 until the piece as long as half the circumference of your feet.


Wide part

With color 1:
Row 1 (RS): k1, * kfb k2, ssk, k2tog, k2, kfb, repeat from * until there is only one stitch left
Row 2 (WS): k all - on a third needle provisionally cast on 20 stitches and continue knitting row 2.
(see photos 1 and 2 in the illustration below).
With color 2:
Row 3 (RS): k1, * kfb k2, ssk, k2tog, k2, kfb, repeat from * until there is only one stitch left
Row 4 (WS): k all
With color 3:
Row 5 (RS): k1, * kfb k2, ssk, k2tog, k2, kfb, repeat from * until there is only one stitch left
Row 6 (WS): k all
With color 1:
Row 7 (RS): k1, * kfb k2, ssk, k2tog, k2, kfb, repeat from * until there is only one stitch left
Row 8 (WS): k all
With color 2:
Row 9 (RS): k1, * kfb k2, ssk, k2tog, k2, kfb, repeat from * until there is only one stitch left
Row 10 (WS): k all
With color 3:
Row 11 (RS): k1, * kfb k2, ssk, k2tog, k2, kfb, repeat from * until there is only one stitch left
Row 12 (WS): k all

Repeat rows 7 to 12 until the piece as long as the circumference of your feet.
Slip stitches to other side of the needle.

Put the first provisionally CO stitches on another needle (photo 3), fold it over (photo 4) and graft these 22 stitches to 20 of the that are on the working needle with the yarn tail in color 1.

The needle holding the stitches from the former provisional CO is now the front needle.
Use the grafting technique (2) as described above while decreasing the first and last stitch on your front needle (as described under grafting techniques (3) above).

Upper narrow part

With color 1:
Row 1 (RS): k1, * kfb k2, ssk, k2tog, k2, kfb, repeat from * until there is only one stitch left
Row 2 (WS): k all
With color 2:
Row 3 (RS): k1, * kfb k2, ssk, k2tog, k2, kfb, repeat from * until there is only one stitch left
Row 4 (WS): k all
With color 3:
Row 5 (RS): k1, * kfb k2, ssk, k2tog, k2, kfb, repeat from * until there is only one stitch left
Row 6 (WS): k all

Repeat rows 1 to 6 until you have reached the circumference of your feet - measuring from the second provisional CO 

Cut your yarn but leave a tail long enough for grafting.

Put the 20 stitches from the 2nd provisional CO on another needle (photo 5) and graft it to the 22 sts on the working needle (photo 6). The former working needle is your front needle while grafting

Use grafting technique (1) as described above and decrease the fifth stitch on the front needle and the fifth stitch before the last.

Weave in ends.

Make two.