Socks...Who Knew?

The next project that I tried to tackle were socks. After all, you see them every day and you can buy them at the evil Walmart for a couple of bucks at the most. How hard could they be to make? The first problem that I encountered was double pointed needles. That would be using 5 needles at once. I found a sock pattern for Magic Strips Basic Socks by Lion Brand Yarn - bought some self striping yarn from a yarn shop in Raleigh and went to work. The problem was that I knit on the inside of the needles and not the outside. Look at the socks. You can tell by the cuff that there the sock parts are inside the cuff. That's because I thought if I wanted the knitted part on the outside of the socks that I had to purl them from the inside. And I'd have to say that it worked. Except that it was really hard. Plus I had reverted to knitting so tightly that my hands and wrists hurt from forcing the needles between the yarn and the needle. Also, I felt that I was micro knitting because I had never used size 3 needles before. After my first sock, I called Gail (my knitting expert) to find out what I was doing wrong. She talked with her friend Darlene, who had the answer. I was knitting on the wrong side of the needles! Duh!! So the second sock I knit the right way. Only problem is, that it didn't fit as well as the first. It was too loose because the yarn probably wasn't the same number of stitches per inch as the Lion Brand yarn and I hadn't knit them half as tight. But they are my first socks and I will wear them with pride. One close fitting and one loose. My husband says that no one looks at socks, just wear them anyway. I am sure that everyone notices my creations so do will not believe that everyone can't tell that I made those socks that I have on and they are perfect in their uniqueness!