Kaitharshayr’s Weblog

Is it a bird..? Is it a plane..? No its…. oh wait the title of the post already gives it away. Oh Well. Look!

Ok so I know it doesn’t look like much, but it’s the start of the first sock I have ever knitted! The pattern is Express Lane by Diane Mulholland.

Now I must admit here I’m not really a sock person, pretty much all the socks I own are quite basic black or white socks, with the occasional blue or brown sock. I’ve never been one for patterned socks, I generally tend to think of them as just too bright/loud. In fact I’m like that with most clothes, I avoid brightly patterned or just bright clothing altogether, quite possibly because subconsciously I don’t want to stand out too much. I’m shy, and I guess there’s that whole I don’t want to be noticed thing, so I tend to stick to dark blues/browns in plain colours.

What’s this got to do with knitting socks? Well from my time at Ravelry, I’ve seen that a LOT of people knit lots of socks. Often in very bright colours, (some of them I think look really pretty even though I know I’d probably never wear that sort of colour). However it has made me wonder, hmm what is the appeal about knitting socks, maybe I should try to do a pair someday just to see what it’s like, and to get some experience. So as you can see above, I found a pattern that I quite liked, and in heh quite a dark non-stand out colour. Amazingly enough while I was trying to figure out my tension I was kinda worried that it’d be too dark, but I don’t know, at the moment I like it. Shall have to see what it looks like when its done.

Speaking of tension it’s strange. I know I have usually have a tight gauge, so I tend to go up either half a needle size or a whole size. The sock pattern calls for 2.50mm, so I started my swatch with 2.75mm, did my measuring, hmm too big. So i dropped down to 2.5mm measured again, and still too big. (What the hell?) Dropped down to 2.25mm and I’m just about ok I think, I’m actually a little worried it might be too tight, but I think I need to knit a bit more to see, and I figure it should stretch a little when it’s blocked. Still I find it very strange that I’ve had to go down a needle size, maybe I’m worried about how fragile my KnitPicks sock needles feel and I’m not knitting as tightly as normal?

I have to say that so far I’m really enjoying knitting the sock, in some way’s it’s actually quite satisfying, and I’m quite taken with it. I have a slightly feeling that socks don’t look as impressive in a photo as it does while its on the needles. Suppose I shall have to see how I feel when I’ve got more done/finished them. I’m hoping I quite like them because I have to say I am quite taken with these, (and here’s the Ravelry page for those of you there) the Entrelac Socks. I really like them, although I’ve never done entrelac before, so I should probably try that someday to get a feel for it. Not that I even have the pattern for these socks so it isn’t really important right now. But still. I do like them.

And finally in other sort of sock related news, I am really taken with these.  Why? Why am I so taken with leg warmers? I’ve never found the things appealing and yet those ones. Oohhh… I think it’s the way they flair, I think somehow that just.. calls to me?? I don’t know what it is, but I do like them. But having browsed through the yarn browser on Ravelry I haven’t really seen anything suitable, the yarn Marnie has used is no longer available and I haven’t seen anything that would potentially create a similar look. (The dark colours also appeal to me.) Perhaps one day I’ll make them.

Anyway I think I’ll leave this for now, I’ve talked enough about socks.