Socks

Early in our marriage, an elderly relative died, and I inherited all his socks...which  lasted me for more than a decade. Now that I am finally wearing out the last of them, I have been working on new socks for myself for next fall.

I priced new socks, but it seems to be a choice between buying super-basic cheap socks, or paying $20 a pair.

Then I occurred to me that I could make socks...I have sticks, I have yarn. I looked up a basic crew sock pattern, for reference for the heel and toe areas, and off I went with the yarn and the needles that I have. (I have knitted several pairs of socks before, mostly for children.)

The yarn was given to me, it is a very nice hand-dyed, hand-spun wool. Not the most durable yarn, so I worked with a double strand, which was just as well as my only knitting needles are about size 8 (made from chopsticks and dowels). I cast on what looked like the right number of stitches, and then used the pattern to figure out what proportion of the stitches went to which needle.

The problem with knitting socks is that the straight areas are rather tedious, especially in comparison with the heels. I used those parts to improve and speed up my knitting technique, first in holding the yarn in the continental style, which is much faster and more efficient (for the knit stitch), and secondly in smoothing my transitions from one needle to the next.

After laundry day, I am going to inventory my socks and see how many more pairs I will need. I don't have enough wool yarn for another whole pair, but I will see what I can come up with.