Month: March 2009

Getting Closer!

The sole and instep are coming along nicely. Only about an inch to go before I start working on the toe – Yay! This part is getting a little tedious because it’s just knit, knit, knit, knit… Then I will have to start all over again to match the pair. On the next one I may make the ribbing a little bigger in the tube… we’ll see how this one comes out.

My dear friend Marisa over at Quilt Okatu gave me an awesome book for my birthday called 2-at-a-time Socks by Melissa Morgan-Oakes. I’m so excited to learn to do 2 socks at once on circular needles!! They have some really cute patterns in there as well. The first example is a pair of toddler socks, perfect for my little 2 year old! I am resisting jumping to that project rather than finishing out the pair of purple socks. My sister-in-law and I are going over to Beverly’s today to shop their 30% off all yarn sale… hopefully I don’t find anything too great because I don’t know if I can resist jumping projects 🙂

I have this old book called The Complete Book of Progressive Knitting by Ida Riley Duncan, copyright, 1940. My mom got it for me from a yard sale a long time ago… well, it turns out that it’s a collectible! I looked it up on amazon and it’s selling for $30-$40. I’m sure she paid about 25 cents or so. Not a bad investment. It’s a pretty cool book with lots of illustrations and basics of garment construction and measurements as well as a history of yarn and knitting. I’ll sprinkle in some fun knitting facts from her book.

Fun Fact #1: There is NO country in the world that does not have knitting as part of their textural work! The earlest knitting example she sites is a Peruvian band of humming birds belonging to the Prato-Nasca Culture dating before 200 A.D.

Heel is turned & Gusset is taking shape


purple socks 012
Originally uploaded by SharonTroia

I am thoroughly entertained with this yarn. The stripes are very fun to work with and change their thickness with each different knit pattern. I’ve successfully turned the heel and began working on the gusset.

Since my last post, I discovered that I have been doing the knit stitch the wrong way this entire time. I know, it’s completely nuts! I wasn’t doing it wrong enough to tell the difference, but basically I was inserting my needle in the back instead of in the front… so that’s why it didn’t matter which way I slipped my stitch. You can kind of tell if you look closely at the first couple of rows on the gusset part of the sock. The v’s are slightly twisted. I learned the right way to do it a few rows in and you can see that the the v’s are nice and flat. And it turns out that knitting the right way is a lot easier and faster 😛

The destiny of these socks has been fulfilled… I now know the proper way to knit a stitch. The curse has been lifted! (at least that’s what I’m telling myslef – we shall see!)

Heel Flap…. Check

Ok, I completed the heel flap last night… phew! Slip 1, Knit 1, repeat (right side) and Slip 1, purl the rest (wrong side). It looks really cool. I actually like the way this turned out better than the striped ribbing on the tube. By the way, the curse of the purple socks reared its ugly head for his portion of the project… I dropped a stitch and made several other mistakes along the way, but every mistake is a learning opportunity right? I’m finding comfort in one of the posts on ravelry about mistakes being good luck… and if there were no mistakes it would look machine made. Trust me, this sock DEFINITELY looks home made and is probably increadibly lucky by now 😉
Here’s a question that maybe Quilt Otaku or some of her knitting buddies can help me figure out… why is it so important to which way you slip a stitch? I’m following Silver’s Sock Class and she spells it out in capitol letters to slip AS IF TO PURL. Why does it matter? Doesn’t it slip the same either way you do it? I find it easier to slip as if to purl, but does it really make a difference on the stitch? I don’t see that it does, which leads me to wonder if I’m doing it wrong.

My cursed socks

I hate to say it, but I think my stripped socks are cursed. I’ve had to cast on several different times, completely unravel several different times and just when I thought I was making good progress (had an inch or so done) I realized I was making a fundamental mistake in my pattern. I pulled everything out last night and completely restarted only to get a few rows in and realize that I had yet another huge mistake. Rather than pull it out and start over, I made a sloppy work around and kept going. These are my first socks and they are for me, for the very fact that they will most likely contain many mistakes. Now that I moved past that major error, the sock is actually starting to look like a real sock! I’m excited!! Now, I’m just crossing my fingers that I won’t find another fundamental mistake and have to pull the whole thing out again half way through.