The Pomatomus socks are finished and ready to be served with a bit of wasabi and a dash of soy sauce.

Project: Pomatomus
Pattern: Cookie A., Knitty winter 2005
Yarn: Colinette JitterBug Jay, about 50-60 g
Needles: Addi bamboo 3 mm dpns and Susanne’s rosewood 3 mm glove knitting needles

I did indeed manage to make the second one a bit smaller around the heel and foot and now the fit is perfect. I also knitted it with glove needles and found it much easier. I’m still waiting for a go-ahead from the designer to publish the modified pattern - will keep you posted.

As for the yarn, I’m a total JitterBug fan now. It’s lovely and soft, and the colours behaved themselves all the way. No striping, pooling or other undesirable side effects. And although the Pomatomus pattern does come out better in a solid colour, I think the Jay colourway looks best in something like this. I haven’t weighed the socks, but think I used about half a hank or a bit more, so I should be able to get another pair of socks from the leftovers, especially if I make them a bit shorter.

Like the deep blue sea.

I’ve never understood why some people think small feet or petite women are cute. There’s nothing cute about falling outside the size charts. It’s a pain. When your shoes are size 32-32.5 (European) and socks size 27-29 (European) and you’re an adult, it’s a bit of a challenge to find decent footwear. There are special boutiques for extra small and extra big shoes, but socks are particularly difficult to find when your feet are the size of an 8-year-old’s but you’d rather not walk around with ladybugs or Batmans on your ankles.

When I realised that my new hobby could at least partially solve my clothing problem, I was ecstatic. No more rolling of the sleeves! Goodbye, hats that cover half of my face! So long, gloves that fall off! And above all - finally socks that fit!

So my next project was to be socks. I’ve never knitted socks before, but hey, there’s a first time for everything. And my first socks were to be no less than the Pomatomus. I fell in love with the design as soon as I saw it, and again - I just had to have them. They remind me of the traditional Japanese wave pattern that I’ve always found very comforting.

I did realise that the pattern was written for regular-sized feet and tried for a while to find a pattern for child-size Poms, but when I didn’t find any, I had to take the fish by the scales and improvise. I figured that if I make my socks about 2/3 of the original size, they should be about right. So I started by casting on 48 stitches instead of 72. Here’s the progress:

Don’t you just love those colours?

Everything has gone well so far. I’ve left out one pattern repeat lengthwise (otherwise the sock would have come up to my knee) and done the heel flap.

The heel turn was a bit problematic as basic maths just didn’t do it anymore. Finally I got through it by adapting the French heel I found in Ullaneule. Thank you, people at Ulla!

And here - drumroll - is the first finished sock!


The heel and the foot are still a bit too big, but all in all the resizing operation went rather well. And luckily the Pomatomus pattern itself wasn’t difficult - I could still watch telly while knitting. Once both socks are finished, I’ll post the modified pattern here (with the designer’s permission) for fellow knitters with small feet or small kids.