The Sock Post

I didn't realize that knitting socks was such an curious thing to do, until I went out in public (gasp!) with my knitting recently.  So, I thought I'd document the building of a pair of socks, the way I do it.  Not the way most, or some do it, but me.  I tend to do things a bit different, which I'll cover when I get to that point. 

Items for sock building:
 Circular and double pointed knitting needles
 a stitch marker
 measure tape
my trusty pattern
and yeah yarn

After snapping a few photos of the knitting in progress, I realized that scale is nearly impossible to decipher from a photo.  I tried taking several photos to get a good scale, but in the end, tis the same thickness of a piece of spaghetti.

I knit my socks toe up for several reasons, all of them being its easier.  Yeah, I trend towards easy peasy rather than tricky and involved at least in sock world.  Cause really, they are SOCKS!  I stuff em in my shoes, I could care less what people think of my socks!  So, the cast on is super cool, and EP (easy peasy) however, it really doesnt do well on DPN (double pointed needles) as their isnt any give to DPN'S made of wood or aluminum and its quite tricky getting another needle in that wee space. 

And as you can see from this next photo, the cable connecting the two points on a circular needle is quite flexible.

I continue on this way with the circulars due to having to increase one stitch at the beginning and end of both needles every other row, and on DPN's I kept getting lost.... where the fuck am I?  shit......rip rip rip, begin again.  The wee jewel thingy is a stitch marker showing me where the beginning is so I know when I've made a round.  The sock is a circle, more or less, and smarter knitters I'm sure could just look and keep track.  Thats way to much work for this lazy knitter, no guessing or close looking for me!

Whew!  Finally done with the increasing portion of the sock and can use DPN's just one circular needle left!  I dont enjoy knitting with the circulars due to the amount of pulling that cable thru to get the point where you want it!  GRRR......

So, I'm all happy knitting along to my latest Korean TV show, yeah I've learned to knit to foreign movies/tv!  Anyway, some stitches kept getting stuck on one of the needles, and as there are 4 in permanent play with one doing the escorting of old stitches into new ones, I never knew which one it was.  Then I heard a fatal sound, crack and the needle broke!  Weep!  Wail!  I LOVED this set of needles! 

I caught the stitches on one of the circulars and knitting had to wait until the next day when new needles could be bought.  Well.  I thought I'd caught all the stitches, turns out nope I didn't.  To make matters worse, I didnt notice it for several rows, and by that time the stitches had been quite happily unraveling.  The two markers are holding the stitches from unraveling any further until I could knit around to that section of the sock for a fix.  A quick repair and I continued on.

All done with the foot, it measures 6 inches, so ready for the gusset and the heel turn.  Which is a bit of knitting magic and makes a cool cup thingy!  Now, this is one area where I'm really a weird sock knitter.  The front of the sock isnt knitted during the entire heel turn and heel, the stitches just hang out and wait until the heel is finished, beginning the gusset I move to the circulars for the same reason I do on the toe, its easier to keep track of where I'm at.  I knit the first pass of the heel turn onto a DPN leaving the edge stitches on their circular.  Why?  That way when I do all my decreases I dont have to keep count, I just knit until there is one stitch on the needle and turn, and repeat.  I have two circular needles and 2 DPN's.  It's sorta kinda crowded, but it works for me, the anti-counter!

This is the heel all finished.  The row of stitches running away from the heel is the gusset, this is where extra stitches are added to make room for your heel.  The heel is double layer to keep from wearing out so quickly on the back of ones shoes, and is a decrease area to bring the stitch count back to the same as the foot.  Now, there are complicated maths to build socks for any foot or ankle issue.  Luckily for math lacking me, I have normal feet/ankles.

I use a ribbing that unstretched looks not like ribbing.  Knit 2, Purl has I think superior stretch and rebound ability over many other combos.  Unstretched

 Stretched!

Finished!