ein Bayerische Sock

I finally made it over the hump that was the never-ending foot of Bayerische sock. I even made the effort last night to graft the toe rather than do my usual three-needle bind off. Here is the first completed sock. It is destined to be an only child for a while yet as the second sock will have to wait until after the Tour de France. (I don't think that le Tour is scheduled to divert into Bavaria this year so I can't really link these to the French theme. Donc, les chausettes Baudelaires sont le projet prochaine.)

I made a few modifications to the pattern as written. The original cuff is knit on 76 stitches before increasing to 96 stitches when the cabling patterns begin. Knitting on 2mm needles, I found the 76 stitch cuff was too snug (ie: too damn small) for my ankles. So I did my cuff on 96 stitches, following the ribbing pattern (a mixture of 2x2 and 1x1) that was established in the increase row. That way, the ribbing still flowed properly into the cabling pattern.
For the leg, I did three repeats of the pattern instead of four. This shows great foresight on my part (!) as I don't think that the cuff could stretch any further if it ended further up my calves.

The heel and gusset were worked pretty much as written. The only exception to this is a modification I make on all heel flap socks - on the first round after picking up the gusset stitches along the heel flap, I knit all the picked up stitches through the back of the loop. Then I start the gusset decreases on the next round. I can't remember where I read about this, but I remember that it was recommended as a way of avoiding holes at the gusset corners. I've never had a gusset-corner-hole problem, so perhaps this extra round is the reason.

Getting towards the toe, I was running out of puff, so I stepped the pattern down, progressively switching to ribbing until I was just working the central panel cable. The toe was worked exactly as written.