Silky Wool Socks

Mmmmm! I do love me some warm feet.

With Winter here and plenty of cold tile all over the house and me and the husband trying desperately not to be the first to cave and turn on the heat, warm socks are just the ticket. Hand knit socks are even better - mostly so I get that extra kick of "how cool is this, I made these" feelings when I put them on. On one rather cold occasion, my feet were festooned in hand knits - stuffed into my lovely socks which were then stuffed into my Fuzzy Feet slippers. Hooray for Wooly Goodness.

Anyhow, these here are my first socks ever. Not counting the Fuzzy Feet. Which were really just ginormous socks that were then felted down. Because I have a thing for being able to try the socks on as I go, I followed the toe up Pom Squad anklet pattern from Magknits.

Obviously, these are not anklet socks. I had some special yarn I was evaluating and I wanted to make the most of it - that and I figured why end at the ankle when I can have cuffs? (That and for some reason, Anklet socks never seem to stay up for me - maybe all the ones I've ever tried are just ill sized - they've all been commercially made, so who knows.)

Anyhow, I tried matching the colors as best as I could, and things started out very promising - until I came to a knot in one of the balls. Rather than try to find a matching spot of color in that same ball, I just spliced and carried on knitting.

Overall, the socks came out quite well considering they are my first proper sized socks. Throwing caution to the wind, I did not gauge swatch, and as a result they are slightly loose, but that should be remedied quite nicely by throwing them in for a quick wash (hooray for feltable yarn) . Everything went quite well until the shortrow heel where I think I may have missed picking up a wrap or two, (some small holes present) and then I had a rather large hole appear when I rejoined the heel stitches to the instep. No matter how much tugging or attempts to pick up the slack by way of adding twisted stitches, I was simply unable to close the gaping hole noted by the "oops" in the photo above. I've heard a remedy is to use DPNs and to just keep moving over a stitch as you knit your rounds - unfortunately DPNs and I don't get along so well - they are always insisting on slithering out of my knitting, leaving me gaping in horror at the now free hanging loops. I've since switched to knitting either on 2 circulars or on one long circular. These socks were both knit at the same time on one long circular - they were started on 2 circs, but I kept picking up the wrong points and having to tink back to remedy the situation - finally in frustration, I switched to one circular just to see if it was workable and voilà - apparently I had just taught myself the magic loop method.