Sunday 31 October 2010

Year of the sock October- Christmas socks

Another last minute posting to get my year of the sock online before the end of the month. These are the first of the Christmas socks, I got an email the other day with the title "it's too early to think about Christmas", I just laughed and carried on knitting.
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A few weeks ago I posted a picture of the things needed for working on these socks, it was not a new pattern but a new method. The chocolate was very important and actually listed in the pattern.
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The knitting in action, but why are there two balls?
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Ta da! Two at a time socks on dpns. This is a very cool method where the second sock is knitted inside the first, you alternate between the socks with each stitch. I followed the instructions from Knitty and used Regia 6 ply. These were worked on 2.5mm needles as the double knitting method is meant to make the gauge looser, I'm not sure it did. I did a mixture of one yarn in each hand and dropping the yarn between stitches.
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Unfortunately the switching between yarns made my hand and elbow ache, so I got about 2/3 of the way down the leg and switched to normal knitting, enough to say that I can do it. I stuck with the 2.5mm needles which give a dense sock, should be nice and hard wearing but took a little over three balls to finish one pair of man sized socks (approx UK size 10). Had to do a quick order to get an enough to finish them up, fortunately the shop still had the same dye lot.
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Finished socks, they will be stowed all ready for wrapping when it gets closer to Christmas.
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5 comments:

  1. We've been having a huge discussion in our knitting group about DPN-v-Magic Loop-v-two circs then you throw the two sock at a time into it....makes my head hurt.

    Your socks look great!

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  2. Amazing technique, I saw some socks made this way a few years ago but hadn't given it any thought lately...thanks for the reminder. I'm always looking for a challenge. I am a dpn fan and there aren't a lot of options for that method. Happy Fiber Arts Friday!

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  3. Interesting technique, I have yet to master even 1 sock let alone 2 at a time.

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  4. Kudos to you for using this technique! The socks look great...so does the chocolate!!!

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  5. Wow. I learn something new every week. I'm just starting to learn sock knitting... one pair at a time on one set of dpns. I'll have to add this to my list of ways to learn how to knit socks. The chocolate is a great tip too... will add that to my sock knitting project bag. :)

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