The past month (or so, I’ve been lax in posting all the things) has
been a month of a lot of knitting firsts for me and I thought I’d share
them with you. Because I got long winded, I’m going to do these as a series
of posts.
So…we shall begin with…
The First First: Knitting Class (and tangentially … sock)
Because I’m the sort of person who thinks to herself “but why
shouldn’t I do it the most awesome and hard way possible on the first
try instead of easing into a thing”, I decided that for the femme Fifth
Doctor costume I’m working on for a con upcoming in July (and then
another one in August and then office Halloween in October) I should not
only knit a vest
(which is done and I really need to post photos of it but haven’t)
which is easy and I KNOW how to do and will be nbd, and sew a skirt
which is using a pattern I’ve already sewn and love and is also nbd, I
should also knit myself socks. Knee high socks. Knee high T.A.R.D.I.Socks.
I made this decision at the end of April and then told myself that
before I could cast on said knee high socks I had to finish the mittens
of repeated epic fail (more to come once that situation sorts itself
out) and also my SO’s cardigan.
Which, as previously discussed, took me until the middle of May. So I
somehow decided that between May 15 and July 3 I would finish the half
completed vest, sew a skirt, also knit another sweater that I wanted to
make for a trip I have on July 9, and knit knee high socks that by all
reports take experienced sock knitters months to years to do because
they are SO DAMN ENORMOUS. Oh, and did I mention I’ve never knit a sock
before in my life and while I conceptually understand that socks have
heels and toes and legs and feet I don’t have a clue about how to adjust
that to fit my actual heel or toe or leg or foot? Did I also mention
that these socks are toe up and leave most of the adjusting to the
knitter? They are.
Which brings me to my first first … my first knitting class. In a timely fashion, my LYS
sent me an email that they were having a “knit a sock” class for the
first two weeks of May. I’d never taken a class there before, but I
learned to sew by taking classes so I figured what harm could it do.
Granted this was a cuff down sock on two circular needles using worsted
weight yarn and not a toe up sock with patterning and self-adjusting on 4
dpns, but at least I could understand the basics of sock mechanics.
Hopefully. The short answer was, I found the people in the class not
that awesome (much discussion that made me cringe at the levels of fail
on various levels) and the teacher was distracted at best and almost no
one but me actually made any progress or seemed to understand knitting
in the round, but the materials I received and the comprehensive
instructions on how to figure out what size your feet were and how the
parts of the sock went together accordingly were hugely helpful. And at
the end of it all I had a sock. Just one, but a sock no less. I want the
cuff to be longer, but I ran out of time, so I’ll probably end up
ripping it out and making it taller ( which can wait until closer to
winter because worsted weight wool socks in the summer are just … no),
but I have a sock.
So there you have it. My first class and my first very plain, very boring, ultimately well fitting sock.
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