Socks and socks and more socks!

I meant to write about my first pair of socks as I was knitting them. I turned the first heel, which I admit was kind of scary for me. I blame it all on Molly, one of the first 3 American Girl dolls. In one of the stories, the girls in her class have decided to make socks for the war effort. Molly and her friends have decided that they don't want to do that so they come up with a different plan. As this plan was unsuccessful, they go to spy on the other girls who are having a knitting party. Molly then notices that they are at the "hard" part of the sock where you turn the heel. For whatever reason, this stayed with me over the years and I've been terrified of knitting socks even before I was knitting because it sounded so awkward and horrible.

Turns out that it's a good thing I got bored and decided to make socks with my sock yarn. I love turning heels. I think it make be my favorite part of the sock making because it's changing the direction of the knitting which is so cool.

Turns out that making the heel isn't that hard. My brain tried to over think the gusset but thanks to youtube, I was able to stop doing that. For whatever reason, I was trying really hard to make it hard for myself and confused myself in the process.

After I got through the heel, it was a quick process to finish the first one. I loved how the stripes managed to line up in the gusset, almost like it was planned that way! (Yes, I realize that it probably was planned that way as the sock pattern I used came with the yarn.)

I started on the second one and had no issues until I got to the toe. Instead of actually measuring the foot on the second sock, I just guessed based off the stripes when I needed to decrease. I should know better but it was going to require more effort at the time to go find my measuring tape and the stripes were already there. Turns out that I created more work for myself as I had to frog part of the sock so that I could get the foot to be the correct length.

I prevailed though and made a pair of socks!

 

And what does one do after they have made one pair of socks?

They make another pair of course! So I set out on my second pair of socks using some yarn mom gave me from a sock knitting kit. It promised to have enough yarn to make a pair of socks. It didn't tell me what pair of socks there was enough yarn for, though I'm suspecting it was for a pair of ankle socks. As this was mystery, unlabeled yarn, I couldn't just pop out to the local yarn shop and buy some more. Instead, thanks to my ingenious husband, I came up with a new solution.

 

Multi-colored socks!

The weight isn't quite the same and I'm sure the fiber isn't either. I did learn how to do a jog-less color change for these socks though and I'm quite proud how that came out. I was originally going to make inverse socks where one had the blue leg and a purple foot and the other had a purple leg and a blue foot. Despite the fact that I am always wearing things in this mis-matched sort of manner, I really wanted these socks to match. I have no idea why. I also wanted to tie in the colors a bit. I would have loved to have figured out a way to bring a line of blue down the side of each foot but I still don't know enough about sock making to be able to do that.

So now that those are finished, I'm already working on my next pair of socks and I'm part of a sock club. I'm not allowed to start sock club socks until I finish my derby socks so that I don't have a million unfinished projects (and therefore don't have to wonder where all my needles have gone to) but it will hopefully be in the next week or so that I can cast on my next set of socks.