What a Pair!!

This is the first pair of socks - all-be-it booties that I have ever made that are the same size!!


Here's the top view. Looks good.

And here's the profile. Still good. (Good thing I shaved my legs!!)


If you don't believe me - look at them minus the feet!!

Socks - Try, try Again

After finishing a big project this past week, I decided to try socks again. I needed something that I could finish quickly and after all, I had bought the alpaca sock yarn on a whim when I visited the Twin Cities and made my hubby stop at my favorite knitting store - 3 Kittens. So I followed the same pattern as my first pair of socks thinking that the reason why they didn't work is that I was unexperienced. But I found out that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Take a look at the sock that I ended up with:
Yup, still makes a sock that is too Big!!

So I searched the internet and found a sock calculator. Who knew?!! I found one at www.needletrax.com/mysocks.htm
And it worked! Here the picture of the new sock. Note that I had to make it smaller because since I used up enough yarn to make one large sock, I only have enough left to make a pair of bootie socks. Also note, that I tried to unravel the socks from the cuff down because I was going to fix the first sock - but that didn't work either! It only unravels backwards (that would be from the toe end). I would have had to unknit the entire sock! I like that alpaca yarn - but not that much! So much for my fast project I was looking for.
Much better. Note: my husband makes a good sock model. Now one more to go. When I finish. I'll take a picture of both socks at the same time.
Another thing I found out is that my cat George loves any natural yarn, wool, etc. Look at what he thinks about the sock:

I now want to call him - Alpaca George!!

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!