The tale of one sock.....

Ok so i have had this dream all my life of knitting socks, it seemed like such a feat (no pun intended) to sit down with a ball of yarn and a few weird needles and end up with socks. All of the cartoons showed it as being only a matter of starting at the toe and knitting for a few seconds and being done...and while many people may find it odd to feel somehow betrayed by a cartoon that is exactly how i feel!! It is NOT a project for the weak willed or the less animated, making a sock (let alone two) is a grueling and maddening process with pain and suffering involve. The pain being the tiny knitting needle point bruises all over my index fingers and my thumbs, and the suffering would be all the times i realized i made a mistake and had to undo hours and hours of work in order to start over again.



Ok now the first attempt was a question of my eyes being bigger than my knitting capabilities, i started with this sock pattern.....




Mostly just because i thought it was pretty, and as i started i fully intended to make it considerably longer, at least a knee high sock if not a thigh high because i thought it would be really pretty with a garter belt. I have one word for you.....HA!

After the third start over and the 53rd look of complete confusion as i read a pattern that made absolutely no sense to me, i finally threw the yarn across the room and gave my poor wrists a break while i stubbornly looked for another, more comprehensive, pattern to fulfill my dream.

After another four patterns with similar results i finally went in search of a tutorial, at this point i hoped to never see another knitted sock reference again in my life but i can't stand to be defeated by a project so i had to keep going until i had indeed mastered the stupid sock.


So in my search i found my sock salvation first in a tutorial (which for some reason blogger wont let me make into a link so here is the link, http://knittersreview.com/article_how_to.asp?article=/review/profile/011018_a.asp ) which was for the most part very comprehensive until talking about the heel, bringing about a 5th 'do over'. Then finally a sock pattern that for the most part actually made sense to me, AND was really cute...though thigh highs they are not!











Aren't they cute? i of course went after the full toe sock because the others seemed far too complicated for me for a first run but i was confident that i could master one and then move on. Of course things never really work out the way they are supposed to in my stories, the guy never gets the girl, the heroine never saves the day, and the socks never seem to just work out.


Don't get me wrong i made a sock, and it even looks like a sock in almost every way possible, and it even fits....but it has about a trillion flaws in it and took so long to make i pretty much put away my knitting needles by the time i was done and vowed not to touch them again for a month. My sock also isn't pretty, i messed up on binding it off, i messed up on the heel, and i messed up in the decrease...but aside from that i actually accomplished my goal and i learned how to knit a sock.


i'm going to try again in a few weeks and i'll post my progress and results so you can suffer along with me ;)