My biggest knitting achievement of 2007 must be: my first socks. Helen coaxed me into overcoming my sockophobia. No chance of a relapse - I've now got the opposite problem...
I. Just. Can't. Stop.
It's been a steep learning curve and there are things I need to tweak - good job there's a second sock to practise on!
First of all, I had a circular-knitting-crisis - like Mari did with her hat - and ended up pushing the work through to the wrong side of the needles and then knitting in the wrong direction. (It's not so hard to do when you're on a packed Friday train up North and there's two kids sitting next to you playing a game of 'Name the thing out of the window'. It went thus: 'tree'...'cow'...'fence'...for THREE hours! Sigh.)
Another head-scratching moment was the grafting of the toe at the end...or the so-called Kitchener Stitch. Actually, I didn't realise when I grafted the first sock that the stitch I was doing was the same as the Kitchener one - otherwise I would have followed the wisdom of Knitty. As it was, I tackled it through the rather wordy pattern explanation and messed it right up. In situations like this, a picture really is worth a thousand words.
There's some fabulous ladders in my sock down the sides (left)...and an odd little hole that has snuck in at the heel seam (below). Fiona suggested dividing the stitches between four needles rather than three, thus creating less strain at the corners and lessening the ladder effect. This definitely seemed to help and also made the first few rows easier to work...tiny yarn on only three 2.5mm-needles is fiddly work indeed.
Helen's tip of knitting a couple of stitches around from one needle to the next (without using the fifth needle) seemed to help too - but then I started getting a spiral effect! I think I was pulling the yarn too tightly at the corners and making a crease. But this has blocked out easily...unlike any ladders that appeared before I ditched the extra needle at the corners so I've been remembering to knit those stitches every few rounds for the second sock...
The peculiar little hole is, I think, some stretch from where the stitches were divided on the needles and where I started shaping the gusset...I've avoided this in the second sock by picking up one more stitch than suggested down the side of heel flap and K2tog the first two stitches to give the right number for the pattern. Bit of a fudge but, hey, who cares? It has a heel, a gusset, a toe, stripes and it'll keep my foot warm...it'll do! Let's just hope they still look like a pair by the time I've corrected the quibbles when knitting the second sock!
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