(Cross over post from LocoBellaTuna)
SSK is NOT the Same as PSSO (My First Sock)
After a year of knitting scarves and squares (to be sewn into a quilt) I've become tired of knitting the same thing over and over. Tay's aunt Cathy gave him a pair of knitted socks for Christmas and when I saw them, I instantly coveted both the sock and the ability to knit them. A couple of weeks after Christmas I received my own pair of socks from Cathy in the mail. (I already have another pair, a previous Christmas gift from her) but I am, and can admit to it, a sock whore. I instantly sent her an email to let her know that I put them right on and then I expressed to her my desire to knit my own pair. She emailed me back with links to patterns and links to video and that weekend I went to the nearest LewisCraft to buy supplies. After spending about 30 minutes looking at sock yarn and puzzling over patterns, I ended up finding a chunkier (cheaper) yarn with a sock pattern included. I bought the proper needles (DPNs - double pointed needles - a huge step for any beginning knitter I was soon to find out), 3 balls of the yarn and returned home.The next day I sat down at my computer with the knitting video running, the pattern in front of me and began trying to knit with 4 very thin and very short needles. My fingers were all over the place as I tried to control them, and then force them (with yarn attached) into the shape of a triangle so I could start knitting into "the round".Once I got the hang of knitting on the needles and keeping in the triangle, a cuff quickly formed.
When it came time to knit the heel, I very quickly realized why people spend the $5-$10 to buy a pair of socks rather than even ATTEMPTING to knit them. I pulled mass amounts of hair out, swore a lot under my breath and stayed up late both Sunday night and Monday night in front of the computer, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. Once I figured out that a SSK was NOT the same as a PSSO, the following shape emerged:
The next morning on the bus I began knitting what would become the foot of the sock and what would turn out to be the most tedious. Around and around we went, over and over again, me occasionally muttering to myself when I'd forget about my fourth needle and start knitting with just three. But eventually, I had enough of the foot that I could knit the toe. Like the heel, the toe was also knitted in white yarn, and ended up looking like this:
And finally, once the toe was grafted together and the holes that had tragically appeared along the way were sewn up, it was complete and looked like this:
SSK is NOT the Same as PSSO (My First Sock)
After a year of knitting scarves and squares (to be sewn into a quilt) I've become tired of knitting the same thing over and over. Tay's aunt Cathy gave him a pair of knitted socks for Christmas and when I saw them, I instantly coveted both the sock and the ability to knit them. A couple of weeks after Christmas I received my own pair of socks from Cathy in the mail. (I already have another pair, a previous Christmas gift from her) but I am, and can admit to it, a sock whore. I instantly sent her an email to let her know that I put them right on and then I expressed to her my desire to knit my own pair. She emailed me back with links to patterns and links to video and that weekend I went to the nearest LewisCraft to buy supplies. After spending about 30 minutes looking at sock yarn and puzzling over patterns, I ended up finding a chunkier (cheaper) yarn with a sock pattern included. I bought the proper needles (DPNs - double pointed needles - a huge step for any beginning knitter I was soon to find out), 3 balls of the yarn and returned home.The next day I sat down at my computer with the knitting video running, the pattern in front of me and began trying to knit with 4 very thin and very short needles. My fingers were all over the place as I tried to control them, and then force them (with yarn attached) into the shape of a triangle so I could start knitting into "the round".Once I got the hang of knitting on the needles and keeping in the triangle, a cuff quickly formed.
When it came time to knit the heel, I very quickly realized why people spend the $5-$10 to buy a pair of socks rather than even ATTEMPTING to knit them. I pulled mass amounts of hair out, swore a lot under my breath and stayed up late both Sunday night and Monday night in front of the computer, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. Once I figured out that a SSK was NOT the same as a PSSO, the following shape emerged:
The next morning on the bus I began knitting what would become the foot of the sock and what would turn out to be the most tedious. Around and around we went, over and over again, me occasionally muttering to myself when I'd forget about my fourth needle and start knitting with just three. But eventually, I had enough of the foot that I could knit the toe. Like the heel, the toe was also knitted in white yarn, and ended up looking like this:
And finally, once the toe was grafted together and the holes that had tragically appeared along the way were sewn up, it was complete and looked like this:
It's not perfect by any means, and I definitely need a lot more practice, but it's still a sock. It has a cuff, a heel, a foot and a toe. And perhaps what's most impressive of all, is that it actually fits my foot:
I'm not sure about anyone else, but I'm definitely impressed :).
posted by Tawny at 9:25 AM
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