SOCKS!!

Having to do a knitting project for my fashion course, i learnt that actually while i hate knitting when i HAVE to do it, it does work its way into your system... and i missed doing it! probably because when i was knitting it was a case of myself, a friend and her mum all sat round knitting... now my friends mum is a right old knitting machine! its amazing how much that woman can knit in the space it takes me to do one row, but then again she has been knitting since forever ago, so she would be good!

my friend and myself however, not as adept and the old yarn jitsu... however by the end of it i think we did quite well! between us we pumped out around 30 different knit samples in roughly 4 days... it was AMAZING knitting!! hahahaha.... however all that knit does pose a problem, you get bored! by the end of a sample knit session your like "OK... so wheres the clothes?" hence the socks!

So one of my friends who is a proper yarn ninja gave me a sock pattern... and here is the results, its not yet finished, cos i haven't got round to it just yet... but for a couple of days knitting, i don't think I've done too badly... Working in the round is different from what I'm used to, and i now have 3 sets of sock needles, i bought myself some metal ones at 5mm... but when i started with them they were far to bulky for me/the yarn i was using... so i gave up

i then got myself some 3mm metal ones, and these were cool... and i started on these, knitted about 3 rows of the ribbing  with them....

I then went to a brand spanking new wool shop in bath! if anyone doesn't know where it is, its in the street behind Marks and Spencer up past KFC, its a bit tucked away but its really cool in there and the woman was lovely! I found this shop because one of my lecturers mentioned it and i thought id go check it out... its really lovely in there and the woman i spoke to was eager to help and answer questions, without following me around the shop and watching my every move... any who... in this shop i found myself some 3mm knitpro multi coloured birch wood needles... £6.50 later, not only had i supported a shop that was just over a week old, i may have opened the doorway to the world that is sock knitting.

So, here is the ribbing and the cuff, I've chosen to do a 4 stitch ribbing... it started and ended with 4 stitches in the round though, meaning i have a section of 8 stitches as a solid thing... this is a bit annoying because it doesn't match the rest of the ribbing... however is great cos it means i know where the start of my round is =D

Knitting the heel flap, you basically work this piece out of the cuff, knitting as you would normally, its very straight forward, although i did find myself knitting until 3am because i simply had to finish the whole section, and i was only 10 rows of knitting away...

 so, i managed to turn the heel OK... apparently this is the worst bit? i found it rather straight forward if I'm honest... and its SO cool, i actually managed to knit a 90 degree turn... considering I've only ever done flat stuff... i was impressed with myself.

Picking up the instep... another really straight forward part of the socks... it was a bit fiddley having so many stitches on short needles... but it went OK...

Can you see that v shape?? the bottom line is where you pick up the instep... and the other one is where you reduce for the instep... which i found SO confusing... mainly because i knitted it wrong the first time round... i reduced 2 stitches every row, when your supposed to reduce on a row, then knit a row... it was a pain to undo those 5 rows... but i got it done in the end...


And that's as far as my socks go for the moment, I'm knitting the foot section at the moment... and then its reducing the toe shaping which looks a challenge on the destruction's I'm following... Update to follow soon hopefully... =)