my first knitted socks

So I consider myself to officially be a knitter now because I've made a pair of socks. A mighty fine pair of socks too if I do say so myself, just look at the colours!!! I am obsessed.

The yarn used is Artesano Handpainted Alpaca Blend DK which is sadly no longer available but Polly Jane Yarns has a large stock of that range which you can find here. This colourway is called Sea Serpent, the perfect name right? I also love the Fairground colourway, its super pretty pinks with lime and I used it to make Betsy's fairground bonnet, the colours on that are incredible too, I might have to purchase more!

I knitted these socks on double pointed needles (dpn's) just to see if I could and boy was that ever an interesting thing to do, having now mastered the art of the magic loop method which turns out to be much quicker, I wonder if I will ever use dpn's again? Particularly because I found that my index fingers got bruised from the points of the needles as I was pushing the stitches from one needle to the next, I mean seriously....bruised fingers from knitting!!

The pattern is a basic vanilla sock pattern called Basic Boy Socks from Jenny Lord's book Purls of Wisdom. There is a modification section so you can make these socks fit for girls and that is the pattern I used. It was easy to follow and an easy pattern to knit, I did have to watch countless videos on YouTube to find out how to turn the heel, pick up stitches, kitchener stitch the toe but I quite enjoyed the learning experience and there was nothing TOO terribly taxing.

I did make a mistake in pattern reading (my usual downfall) by following the boy size for the heel flap so I had to rip that all back and start again which was a bit of a pain but only because I then slipped some of the stitches on the needles the wrong way round and things look a bit shifty round that area now! I think it was a good idea to make my first socks using a dk weight yarn, nothing too fiddly and this yarn is one of those that keeps the stitches in place even when they are off the needles so that helped tremendously when I was ripping back and picking up.

If you want to find out more about these socks you can watch the podcast episode 13 which I have linked below.