Two of a kind

Thuja

Yarn: Dark Horse Yarns Fantasy (50% nylon, 50% acrylic; worsted weight)
Color: 39 (variegated green)
Needles: US 6 dpns
Stitches: 44

Miracles do happen. After a thirteen month hiatus, I finished this pair of socks. The funny thing is that I made the second one in two days, more or less. I even *gasp* enjoyed it and understood what the sock knitting maniacs out there like. You know who you are.

The break illustrated that I have progressed as a knitter. The first sock (on the left in both of the above pictures) has a looser fit and isn't knit quite as well. It looks just a little wonky, like an exaggerated version of the Platonic sock ideal, while the second is closer to the true form.

On the first day of my return to sock knitting, I knitted the cuff, leg, and heel flap. The heel flap looked slightly off, as though it were not wide enough, but I attributed this to knitting more tightly. I made an error while turning the heel and bravely (and somewhat stupidly) removed the needle and frogged this part as well as the flap. Due to all the slipped stitches, I couldn't figure out how to get them back on the needle. Granted, it helps if you rip out a stitch at a time instead of the whole row, but my foolishness was an unexpected blessing. For you see, I had misread the directions. The pattern for the heel stitch goes like this:

Row 1 [RS]: [Sl 1, k1] to end
Row 2 [WS]: Sl 1 , p to end

I had the bright idea that the bracket-free second row was supposed to be knit like the bracketed first row. This was a deliberate choice despite what the directions clearly show. This was responsible for my slightly narrower heel flap. I had a devil of a time getting the stitches onto the needle and wasn't sure they were all turned the right direction, but it all worked out for the best.

On both socks I have holes below the ankle. It's where I'm supposed to pick up the stitches. Note to self: pick them up closer to the last stitch on the working needle. Having encountered this problem on the first sock, I thought I had been more attuned to this problem. At least the hole is on the other side, which means that I can hide the holes to some degree by wearing the first one on my left foot and second on my right.

My biggest improvement is eliminating the ladder on the bottom of the foot. I think you can make it out on in this picture, especially if you click and enlarge it. I focused on the tension when moving to each new needle and pulled the first and last stitches tight. My tightness got the better of me on the cuff as it could stand to be a looser, but that's something easy to fix in the future.

So there they are, my first socks. They're far from perfect, but I'm proud that I was able to teach myself. When I made the first one, I didn't think I could do it. Calculating the proper stitch count remains an issue, but at least the actual work involved is something I can manage. Who knew?