Now I know worsted yarn isn't exactly ideal for yarn, but it's really just a practice pair, and it's what I had on hand. I wanted to do magic loop socks, but the smallest circular needle I have is US 6 and 29 in. While I didn't really feel comfortable doing two at once, I was determined to do toe-up magic loop socks. So I hit Ravelry where I found a toe-up magic loop sock pattern!
I had to learn a new cast-on for the socks. The pattern said to use the Turkish cast-on, but for whatever reason when I searched it, I ended up with Judy's magic cast on. I'm not sure if they're the samw thing or not because I never did look up a Turkish cast-on video after I watched Judy's magic cast-on. Now, that doesn't mean I understood the cast-on right away. I didn't. I think I re-started the first sock, oh, twenty times. Sometimes I messed up the cast on, or messed up the increases or got confused or just wasn't satisfied with the way it was looking. Even so (and maybe because), I still somehow ended up one stitch short on one of my needles, and I didn't notice until I was starting the heel, so that's just that. I added an extra stitch while I was doing the heel increases, and thought I had it fixed, only to somehow decrease back down to one stitch too few again on the same needle. So I don't know. Then boyfriend said he wanted the cuff to be rib stitch, so I did a few rows of that, and gave it to him to try on one last time.
It may sound like I have a finished sock. Well, that's not exactly true. You see, when I gave him this sock to try on, we realized a couple of things, the first being that I don't understand socks. The socks was actually too big. Boyfriend was very kind and said he would just use them as boot socks, but I take pride in my work, and I wanted it to be what he wanted and not something he settled for. And of course I messed up the heel. As I said, the sock was too big, so when I was doing the increases for the heel gusset, I didn't increase as much as I should have for the size of the sock because it would have been just one more part of the sock that was much too big. I didn't think anything of it (again, no understanding of socks) but as many of you can probably imagine, it was a big problem. The heel was crazy uneven and weird looking, and then I had made a mess of the ribbing I was doing for the cuff. All told, it was not a successful first attempt at socks.
However, I pushed the hours of work and what seemed like millions of attempt at restarting already to the back of my mind and frogged the whole sock. And made the whole socks again.
This time, I cast on 10 stitches per needle because boyfriend has wider feet, and only increased to 44 instead of 48. As I knitted the body of the sock, boyfriend said the fit was much better, and I could see it was, and i had increased to the appropriate amount on each needle. For the Fleegle heel, I actually followed the instruction and increased to the correct amount and decreased to 40 to really make the cuff fit. The cuff on this one is still a little loose on boyfriend, but the rest of the sock fits so well that it doesn't matter.
I've even started on the second sock!
I'm a little disappointed because I wanted to have the heel also be white, but I really just couldn't figure a way to do it, so I left it be and now I'm over half way to having knitted my first pair of socks!
Happy knitting!
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