Single No More

My poor, lonely sock. All alone for over 3 years with no mate. Today, that's changed.

I'm so happy to have this sock off my needles and the pair on my feet. It's almost as if some imaginary weight has been lifted from my shoulders, and I can now go about all my knitting guilt-free, knowing this sock now has a mate.

While I don't think I'll be making a habit of taking over 3 years to make a pair of socks, it was actually pretty interesting to see how much I've improved as a knitter over that time. My decreases are much, much cleaner, I'm much better at being able to read my knitting, and I've learned to trust my intuition. There's a mistake in the pattern, and when I knitted the first sock, it appears I just followed the pattern exactly without even thinking about it. When I got to that part of the pattern in the second sock, I saw the instructions and immediately knew there was a mistake. For consistencies sake, I knit the sock according to the pattern, since that's how I knitted the first one, but it was really a confidence booster to see how far I've come.

The pattern was Marilinda from Cookie A.'s book Knit.Sock.Love. I love the finished result, and actually really enjoyed knitting the second sock, but I feel that it's a little ridiculous for there not to be some errata information, especially since the error I picked up on is pretty glaring, and almost everyone who has knitted these socks on Ravelry has noticed it. I'm hoping to make a few more pairs of socks from this book, and am going to make sure I read through the Ravelry notes of other knitters for any pattern mistakes.

This yarn is a skein that I picked up at a fiber festival years ago from an indie dyer in Georgia. While I absolutely love the color, I didn't truly love knitting with the yarn. The twist on my skein was so high, that at times, the yarn became tangled up in a mess. I remember having this problem while knitting the first sock, so I don't think it's because it was sitting for so long in a center pull ball. I even tried rewinding it a couple of times, hoping that would help, but it didn't. I was worried in some places that the yarn was going to break, so I'm a little concerned about longevity, but only time will tell.

Now that my first sock of 2015 is done, I'm itching to do more! This morning I cast on for some cozy socks using some wool I dyed with black walnuts. I love a good pair of thick, cozy socks!