Gasp! I made socks!

I know some knitters knit socks almost exclusively and I never expected to be one of them, but with pair 1 in the bag I can see how they become addictive. They are a great portable project.

I was looking for a knitting project for over Christmas (knitting in front of the TV when you have visitors is a bit more companionable than sewing on a noisy machine in another room!). By coincidence Kristen from K-line was running a knit along on her blog to knit a pair of socks in a week using a pattern she devised and made available for free.

I looked for a yarn without too high wool content due to itchiness issues.  After much debate on Twitter I went with Opal Rainforest which is super wash with nylon to make it hard wearing.  The colours are beautiful and I love the striping effect.

For some reason Blogger wants you to see this pic this way around.  Thanks Blogger!

 I ordered a few colours to get the hang of socks (and in case my first pair came out unwearable!). The colours I chose were Tom the Bard,  Lea the Drummer and Rudi the Saxophonist (odd names as apparently they are names after endangered rainforest species). After deciding to give the first pair to my mum she chose Tom the Bard which is a mix of greens, blues and turquoises.  I used Addi Lace needles as Kristen recommended and really liked them - the join between needle and cable (which is my pet hate with circulars) is so smooth and never catches.  As I'm a tight knitter, I went up a needle size to 2.5mm which worked fine.  To widen it a little round the leg as my mum hates tight socks, I added 8 additional stitches to get an extra 1".  I knitted the rest as per the pattern, adding a couple of extra decrease rows to lose the extra stitches during the toe shaping.

The pattern is really easy to follow with charts to keep count of the number of repeats you've done. Kristen uses magic loop on circulars as I did but she shows how to use the pattern on dpns too.

The only issue I had was in doing the Kitchener stitch for the toe. Sock 1 was terrible (unpicked and redone several times in different methods until I gave in and just sewed it up) but I found a clear tutorial for sock 2 and it worked really well. You can find it here.  Here's a pic of the good one - you're not getting a pic of the bad one!

So there are at least 2 more pairs in my future (and N wants a purple pair - I am hopeful I can get a small size pair out of the wool I have left after knitting a adult pair so I'll be trying a pair for her in this colour first.). 

Have a look at Kristen's tutorials and pattern if you'd like to give it a go. Did you knit along? Have you made socks before?