Friday 11 March 2011

Sock!

After being stuck on how to do the heel gusset for my first sock, I asked on Saturday at my bi-monthly stitch'n'bitch session at Get Knitted. Turns out I was simply reading the directions and making them more difficult than they really were - shows how well my brain works sometimes I guess. Once I found where my error was, I was keen to get started again on it. 

Cue me sitting down and working like a mad thing on my knitting this week. I didn't sleep much at night, and one of the few things I can do in the wee hours of the morning is knit, since it's quiet. I knit so much my hands started hurting rather badly, so I would switch to crochet for awhile, and then knit some more the next day when the hands had recovered. In this way, I've got a lot of my Juliana Wrap done on the hook and have finished the first half of the socks as well. The yarn is YarnAddict Merino Plus Twist, a combination of mostly merino wool plus some nylon to give it a little durability. It's apparently the best mix for socks. The cuff is a "knit through the back of the loop, purl" rib, and I found the twisted knitting a little tricky to do considering the fuzziness of the yarn, but once I got to the main part where you knit straight, it ceased being a problem. 

I'm really, really pleased with how it turned out. There are no holes in places where holes form easily if you're not very careful, (in fact, there are no holes at all) and I even found grafting the toe with the kitchener stitch to be rather painless. Given all the moaning people do about this particular finish, I was a little hesitant to try it, but my book on socks gives a good description of how to do it, so I just followed that and figured it out in no time. 

I made the smallest size, and they're a snug fit, but they do fit, thanks mainly to the ribbing. The yarn itself has no give at all really, but I found the sock to be comfortable, and look forward to getting both complete so I can wear them. I've cast on the second one and hope to have it done in a week or so - a lot more quickly than it took me to finish the first one!