Sock SUCCESS!!

I made socks!  Look, look!

Ok, I know, not a huge deal to countless knitters out there.  However, this was a monster for me.  I tried early on to knit with dpns and cast them down in frustration. I used them as stitch holders on other projects for the most part.   Dpns were my knitting nemesis.  That being the case, I was limited with what I could do.  Flat, rectangular or triangular items, or ones with enough of  a circumference to be completed on circular needles.  But socks were always in the background, taunting me, whispering rude insults directed at my knitting prowess.  They needed to be put in their place.

So I tried "Magic Loop".  What is this??  I don't know who thought this weirdness up or why it is so crazy popular among the knitting community, but I hated it even more than dpns.  For those who don't know, you basically knit in a circle of any size by using a super long circular needle but only two needles.  You knit on one, then pull the cord through and knit on the other one.  Weird, awkward, awful.  I was annoyed and put off.  But wandering about on Ravelry I kept seeing these "easy" sock patterns.  Grrr.

THEN! HA!  In my internet meanderings I found someone who said that if you have difficulty using a set of four dpns, try five.  Five?  Five.  You put your stitches on four needles instead of three.  Huh....this made sense to me.  A square turns out a better circle than a triangle (I'm sure there is some complicated knitting physics involved there) and most patterns use a stitch number that is divisible by four, not three.  Hmmmm....I was intrigued.

Time for a trip to my LYS.

There, I met this wonderful little firecracker of a lady.  She was tiny, round and elderly, but that wasn't slowing her down!  I had never met her before; it has always been the owner and another younger lady working there.  I told her my frustration with making socks and she proceeded to tell me six wonderful tips...

1) Knit with five needles instead of four.  (Better circle from a square, she tells me.)
2) Knit your cuff first, or at least about an inch of the top of the sock, flat, not joined in the round.  That way you have some stability to keep your needles from flopping all over the place. It's easy to seam up that little gap afterwards.
3) Use a grippier type of material.  Metal is slippery but the Hiya Hiya stainless steel needles she recommended oddly enough are not anywhere as much.
4) Keep the two needles you are working with ABOVE the other needles.  That way the others just kind of hang out without being bothersome. And if you have the right needles, they won't slide out of the stitches.
5) Focus only on the needles you are using at the moment.  That means two.  Don't worry about all those other needles.  Don't try to handle all of them at once.  If you aren't working with them, they are essentially stitch holders.  Ignore them.
6) To prevent ladders (a line of loose stitches created when you move from one needle to the next), tug on the SECOND stitch in, not the first.

Well then.  I bought two sets of Hiya Hiyas - one stainless and one bamboo and off I went with a new sense of cando.  This is going to work.  I cast about online for a good stretchy cast on so that I could actually get these socks on my feet if they ever actually became a finished pair, and found the German Cast On. Figured out which one of these "easy" patterns I was going to attempt. Cast on....knit an inch flat...divided the stitches onto four needles and joined in the round.

Wait a tick...I CAN do this!!

Yes, I had to tear out and redo sections (part of this was due to the fact that the pattern I was using had one line of instructions reversed and I tried it three times thinking I was doing something wrong before I realized the pattern was goofed), but slowly, slowly, it turned into a sock.  I ended up combing two separate patterns simply because once I realized the one had that error, the pattern I found to fix it had some portions written clearer and vice versa.  I finished that first sock while visiting my parents, my dad sitting on the couch beside me, watching me intently as I neared the end. My Kitchener stitch toe wasn't the prettiest, but I did it!  I had knit a sock!

This success opens up a whole new world of knitting.  Thanks to that wonderful little knitter at the yarn shop, I can now not only knit socks, but being able to knit properly on dpns without endless frustration means I can knit hats, mitts, gloves and sleeves.  Oh dear.  I think I am in trouble.  I already have three giant binders full of patterns, based entirely on the fact that I couldn't knit with dpns.

I have now finished the second sock as shown in the picture at the top and have started my second pair.  Like anything, the first pair was a major learning experience and I am expecting the second set to go a bit smoother.  I have found that overall, I have to use a needle size one down from the recommend size on the yarn label, and that seems to be true with socks as well as these turned out to be a bit big and more like a slipper sock. On this pair I am using the same yarn as the first, but with a size down of needle.  This means trying the bamboo Hiya Hiya set I purchased and I am finding I really don't like them at all.  I will be buying stainless dpns from now on.

I have investigated different ways to do toes and heels and the pattern I am doing now is a different kind of heel.  My first pair I did used a heel flap and gusset which looks like this.  The current pattern is called a short row heel, which basically has a single diagonal line across the heel and looks like a sock you would buy in the store.  It is supposedly quicker and easier than a flap and a gusset, but it requires me to learn the wrap and turn technique.  Eeep!  We'll see how that goes.  I have about an inch of the cuff done, so I am a ways off from having to work the heel.

Funny how Michael's just happened to have a major yarn sale as I finished the second sock...