Socks for the Man

It definitely seems like I have been knitting more than crocheting; however, in my defense I say that the Navajo has really beaten it out of me - ya know, the desire to hold a hook. And then, when I do pick up a project, like the Have a Heart Shawl I recently reviewed, I don't dilly dally - I get in and get 'er done.

So, my most recent project completed was not a crochet project - it was knitted socks.



I will take this moment to say that while I have only done vanilla socks (nothing fancy, no lace or rickem-rackem anywhere to be found), they are pretty addicting. AND I have had so many suggestions on how to do socks with different cast on and bind of methods that I can continue to do vanilla socks for a wee bit longer and still be learning something new with each pair.

So back to the socks -

I think the funniest thing is that I asked the Man to take a picture of his socks for me. I meant "take a picture of you wearing your new socks" - but instead he had to manly up his socks by taking manly pictures of his manly socks next to his manly weights and on his manly air hockey table.

*laughs*

I thought that was really kinda funny.

The reason I asked for him to take a picture while WEARING the socks is because I don't have sock blockers. I really need to get some mostly just for taking pictures for the blog - other than that, sock blockers (to the best of my knowledge) serve no purpose. I get the same blocking affect by having washed the socks and wearing them.

For these socks I used Red Heart sock yarn with aloe in them. He really liked that yarn even though we were standing at a huge wall of sock yarn in multiple different colors. I knew he wouldn't want multi-colored socks, but honestly, I thought he'd go for at least something in dark grey or black.

Nope - he chose off-white.

Going round after round in off-white is not near as exciting as going a few rounds in Opal and being surprised at the next color that pops up.

These were made as toe up socks and instead of using the m1 instructions I used for my first pair of socks, I used a kfb (knit front and back) to do my increases. I found this eliminated the tiny holes at the toe that the m1 instruction caused in the first pair. Granted, they are not large holes - but they are holes nonetheless. I did a long tail cast on, which I know is odd - but I had forgotten what I did with the first pair so I was improvising since my book was on loan to my friend Swerves.

I worked up to the short row heel and found a video on YouTube for doing the short row heel - I found it to be extremely helpful (knitpurlhunter - video 1). From video 1 you can find video 2 in the right hand column.
Her instruction was clear enough on the heel that I used it for sock 1 but when I got to sock 2 I was able to do it on my own without needing to reference her video.

Anywhoozles, from there I worked standard knit up to where I wanted the ribbing to begin and did a k3,p1 ribbing.

I finished these over the course of 6 days, knitting on them a couple hours each day - so I am thinking that perhaps I'm not as excruciatingly slow at knitting as I originally thought I was.

YAY!

On to my socks!

(oh, and if I catch him wearing the socks I'll snap a picture of them on his feet)