Behold...Frankensocks!

Yes, this is what I've been doing between writing projects. They didn't take very long because I used thick yarn and fat needles. They are boot socks, and I made them with this Icelandic yarn sarah_create gave me. They are Made for Idaho because seriously, after fifteen seconds, your feet are HOT in them. Now I just need the temperature to fall back down to -20F and I'll be set!

Um, yeah. Anyway, if you've ever wanted to knit socks, let's just say that...it isn't easy. I don't care what the patterns and internet people say, socks aren't easy. First of all you have like, four needles going so that you can knit a tube shape. Which sounds nice in theory, but these needles are double-ended, and it's hard to keep the yarn from falling off of the other end. And once you narrow your stitches down because you're getting to the toe, why, it's all so close and tight it's hard to work.

The other thing no pattern says is that knitting in the round means there is no wrong side. In normal, flat knitting, you knit one side, then turn it over and knit the back, right? Well, you never get to the "back" in the round. This is reeeeally impotant to understand because if you're trying to do, say, ribbing (knit one, purl one, for example), and you think you're going to knit the "back" side on your next row, well, you'll find yourself making a lovely popcorn stitch, instead. It looks cool, but it doesn't keep up your socks. And if you are doing the regular, straight stitch known as the stockinette (normally done by a row of knitting followed by a row of purling), you will instead end up with the Krause* stitch, which I have no idea how to translate into English, and which looks rather like you should be wearing German Tracht and yodeling in Alps.

Now that the bigger yarn let me see just what was going on, I think I'll try the other yarn I brought back from Germany, which is actual sock yarn and in the German national colors. But uh...it will probably be a while before I get those done.


*I always prefer pictures in knitting because I have learned to do this skill in piecemeal over several countries. The older lady I first lived with in Chile, my "mamita," was scandalized to find out that no one had taught me to knit by the time I was 21 years old!! So every night she gave me knitting lessons. I still wear the scarf I made (er, although while I was out I have a feeling she unpicked and re-knitted large sections of it...) But I never saw any written instructions. She just showed me how to do it. Tejer and reves and a funny little slip stitch that lets you knit two sides at once. So the English knitting codes when I got back to the States were pretty much incomprehensible to me. I've figured some out--but then I went to Germany, where not only is the terminology different, of course, but where they knit differently. As in, Germans, Chileans, and Americans all do different things with the yarn and needles to get the same effects. So I've learned to sort of knit by guesswork and intuition.