A Pair!

Today I finished my first pair of socks!!!

Not really the ideal day to finish them, given that it was 34 degrees here today, but my office is over-air-conditioned, so I still got to wear them this afternoon :)

I am SO happy with how they turned out! There's a few small mistakes in them (which i'm not going to point out to you) but in general they're really successful.

I'm already eager to start my next knitting project. I'm going to knit some socks with one of my friends from work, so yesterday we went into the city and bought some yarn for them. We're planning to cast on in our lunch break tomorrow... just as soon as I choose which pattern I'm going to use!

Sock Progress: One down...

I've already shown you the initial progress of my first socks, but I've come a long way with them since then.

After making the leg of the sock as long as I wanted it I followed what the pattern said and carried on knitting only half of the stitches in a k1s1 manner to make the heel flap:

The k1s1 stitch was quite fun, as on the rows where the yarn changed colour I'd end up with stitches o alternating colours. It was tricky to get the hang of though and I think my tension was a bit tight.

Then I went on to what I'm informed are "short rows" to shape the heel:

They were even more fun as they were nice and simple as long as I kept good count of where I was and made the sock start to become 3D!

Next came the gusset, which I also found quite easy. The hardest bit was working out where to pick up the stitches, but I didn't stress about it too much and just focused on getting the right number of stitches:

Then it was onto the foot, which was super easy after the complicated-ness of the heel! Before I knew it I had enough foot and just had to do the toe:

I even braved it and looked up a video to learn the "kichener stitch" to finish off the end of the toe, and voila, a sock!!!

I cast on the second sock straight away (this was back on the 2nd of Jan) and I'm now a little over half way through it. I think I see some more knitting time over the next few days as I REALLY want to finish these. The pace has slowed slightly as I'm back at work, but as I'm getting the hang of it now I can do it while watching TV as long as the show isn't too involved (ie it's fine with most of the TV that I watch!)

Against all of your advice...

Huge thanks to everyone that commented on my last knitting post about what I was doing wrong. My knitting is going much smoother now, and after finishing my first easy project (which I will be able to share with you after Christmas) I have decided to jump in the deep end and have a go at socks. I know you all advised against it, but I'm going to give it a go, fully expecting it to be challenging. I am armed with two detailed books on knitting socks from the library (more on those later), a pattern from ravelry, and the internets.

I am using some yarn that I bought from Spotlight (that said it was for socks, so I figured I was safe buying it even with my lack of knowledge of yarn!), and some 2.5mm bamboo double pointed needles. Like a good little knitter I first knit my gauge swatch, which luckily turned out just right. The thin yarn and little needles were a bit weird to start with but I got used to them pretty quickly.

So then I started on the socks. So far I have knit about 2.5" of the leg of the first sock, so I'm still on the easy bit. I'm apprehensive of what I need to do to go around the heel, but I've read through the two books I've got and have picked one method that is heavily pictured to try.

Wish me luck and good progress!