Belated Celebration

I’ve been so eager to share this, but although I finished it a week ago, getting a photo taken and posted seemed to be a problem for me. It just really was that sort of week…

Anyway, finally – Tah dah!

I have my very first ever completed hand knit sock! There is no way I could be happier with the way it turned out. It fits – well… like it was made for me – but by someone who knew what they were doing. ;o) This is the Spiraling Coriolis from Cat Bordhi’s New Pathways for Sock Knitters book. I followed Cat’s instructions obsessively, measuring about 5 times, and ripping it all out to start over again when I found my midfoot apparently shrank by a half inch after I’d gone a third of the way up my foot. Since I really didn’t know what I was doing, I reasoned that my best course of action was to trust her implicitly, even when what I was supposed to do made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. My reward for being so scrupulous in my obedience is that I’m thrilled with the end result. What more could I ask?!

There is only one problem I found with the pattern, and it’s not difficult to figure out how to deal with it. At the beginning of working the heel, the instructions say to add one stitch if you are working with an odd number of stitches, but they don’t take that into consideration later when they state that there should be 2 fewer stitches than you started with on the needles at the end. A sneaky decrease will easily fix that problem. If you work from the book, don’t tear the whole thing out thinking you’ve made an error!

By the way, if you can see an odd blue thread going down the side of the ankle section, that’s my row counting thread. I’ll remove it when I have the second sock done.

Sock number two has been cast on, and I’ve worked all the toe increases, so I’m past the porcupine stage now and ready for a spot of straight knitting. Considering my level of excitement over sock one, if I had nothing else to do, I’d have a pair by tomorrow evening, I’m sure. Don’t hold your breath. ;o)