Swedish sock

It was so nice to have a day off from work this week. I got to accomplish some planning for knitting the historic sock. First, my yarn came, and I love it - it is 70% merino, 30% silk. It is a joy to knit with. Counting the stitiches in the photo of the artifact, I believe the sock was knit at a gauge of about 20 stitches to the inch. The smallest needles I own are 000, and that knits up a sample at 18 stitches to the inch. Not quite small enough. And I have a project on those needles at the moment. So I've decided to knit the socks on 00 needles. They knit up at a little more than 10 stitches to the inch. That makes it easy - I just have to knit half as many stitches.

After I knit a gauge swatch, I had to figure out how to make the pattern. I tried a few different ideas:

Purling the first and last stitch of the round; knitting the first and purling the second; purling the first and last stitch of every other row. I decided purling the first and last stitch was the way to go. I also needed to figure out the best way to decrease as the sock gets closer to the ankle. I decided the best way is to purl 2 stitches together at the point of the triangle. It makes the decrease practically unnoticable.  I also decided to keep the top of the sock fairly plain. I have no idea what the top of the artifact looks like, but since the majority of the leg is plain, I decided to keep the top plain, too. So I cast on 166 stitches, and got to work:

As you can see, I've knit about half an inch. At this rate, I'll have new socks in a year!