knitting in the dark

I love knitting socks for my friends, especially when they’re clearly proud of their handknits. My friend Ben sent me a message that said he was wearing the socks I’d made for him this past summer and that he’d received “two compliments so far today”.

Ben picked the yarn while we were on Cape Cod this summer and I knit him a pair of (11″ long!) socks. These are made out of ONline Supersocke 100, which I had never used before but seems to be another good basic like Regia or Fortissima Socka.

The pattern is something I made up so that the sock would have some give to it when completed to allow for a good snug fit but allowed me to knit most of each round in stockinette.

Shortly after finishing Ben’s pair I visited my friend Janie, who now has her own knitting blog at JanieGirlCrafts, and she was knitting her very first pair of socks out of the same yarn! I had knit her a pair of Primavera Socks (ravelry link) out of Patons Stretch Socks for Christmas/Valentine’s/winter last year:

Let me tell you: NEVER AGAIN will I knit with this yarn. It was seriously icky. I picked the color because I knew Janie would like it and the price was very reasonable. But the stretchiness in combination with splitting every few stitches really made me glad when this pair was over and done with!

The Primavera pattern is very likeable though - easy to remember, simple enough to show off a yarn, and could be knit up into socks for a man.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 11:38 pm and is filed under knitting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.