Project 52: Sock It To 'Em

Please excuse the crappy iPhone photo for this week's Project 52 post. Also ignore the random subject, background and staging. Photo awards, this one isn't going to win any!

I feel like I've grown as a knitter this year. I've enjoyed knitting for around five years now, but I've tended to stick to safe things and not stray out of my comfort zone too much. This meant mainly knitting hats, scarves and starting lots of other projects but not finishing them.

Then the toys came along and suddenly I was able to make things that not only looked good, but that didn't matter so much if they had mistakes in because it just added to their character. I've learnt a lot of new techniques whilst learning to knit toys.

But I've also found myself looking at some of the other things people knit and feeling a little bit jealous because I want to knit pretty things like those too. One of those things was socks which I've always put off because double-pointed needles and I do not get along. But I've been reading more and more about this thing called Magic Loop.

And here's the result so far:


Now I don't know about you, but I'm insanely impressed with what I've got so far! This sock has taught me several new techniques, not least of them being Magic Loop (which basically involves using one long needle to do the job of four or five double-pointed ones) but also I've mastered picking up stitches (with black wool, no less!) something which I've previously avoided like the plague, and hopefully in the not too distant future I'll be getting to grips with kitchenering, which fingers crossed will be less painful than it sounds.

Ironically Magic Loop knitting isn't as new to me as I thought it was. I kind of figured it out all by myself when I'd only been knitting for a few months, was making a toy in the round and had decreased to the point that I should have switched to DPNs but didn't have any. It was sort of cobbled together and one of my circular needles hasn't been the same since. This way is much better.

And I'm getting to use some awesome stripy wool with this, it's called Paintbox and it's really pretty but would probably look a bit weird if it was the main colour of a hat or something. This way as well the socks will match but not be totally identical, so perfect for me.

Hopefully the second sock will be rustled up fairly quickly and this can be my first finished project of 2014!