Sara's Silly Socks

I have long harbored a secret love of slightly outrageous socks. Not too bright, not too flamboyant, but patterned or stripey or with cute little things on them. I have a pair of light blue socks with lions, elephants, zebras, and giraffes on them. I have a pair of biking socks with smiley faces on the left side of each ankle and not-so-smiley faces with the tongue sticking out on the right side (good day/bad day socks). I have another pair of biking socks with a bunch of different color daisies on them. And I have lots of stripey socks in different colors. I wear mundane clothing most of the time but I like my socks to be a little bit more exciting.

So, when I decided to try knitting socks, I knew I'd probably be bored with solid color sock yarn but the multicolor pre-patterned sock yarn sounded like fun!


As you can see I've got 1.5 socks so far. One sock isn't exactly useful. It brings to mind wee Willy Winky running through the town. Except I think he had two socks and only one shoe.

Oh well. Soon I shall have two whole socks.

Knitting socks on two circular needles isn't particularly difficult. You start with a bit of ribbing, then switch to stockinette stitch round and round until you reach the heal flap where you you've got a knit, slip, knit - purl across thing going on, then you turn the heal and pick up the gusset and knit around with some decreases until you're back to the number of stitches you started with. Then knit around until it's long enough and decrease a bit for the toes and use a fancy stitch to sew it closed. Whew!

With the right directions it's really not as hard as it might sound. I'm using a book called Knitting Circles Around Socks (Knit two at a time on circular needles). I decided to knit one sock at a time for my first effort since I've never knitted socks before. The biggest difficulty is making sure the second sock is the same as the first. That won't be a problem when I move on to knitting two socks at once, though I suspect I might run into trouble keeping all the yarn and needles sorted.

I'll let you know how that goes. I've got the yarn all lined up for the next few pair.


The super colorful stuff is for Magnificent Mary (from Shazam in the Kitchen). As soon as I finish my second sock, I'll move on to Mary's socks and try working two at once. I don't usually like to knit for someone else when I'm trying new things but I figure, if it doesn't work out I'll buy some new yarn and make her something fancy to make up for it. The two less colorful skeins are for me.

After I bought those Mary showed me an ad for this stuff:

It's called Regia Galaxy color yarn and I must have it. There are a dozen different colors and they're all swirly and swoopy and named "Jupiter" something-or-other. Jupiter is my favorite planet. They must have known. I wonder if any of their yarn includes the great red spot! (Yes, I have a favorite planet. Yes, I understand this makes me a huge dork. I'm ok with that. Don't look so embarrassed, little brother. You live far away. This does not reflect on you.)

One day I will tire of socks. And when I do, I will have to find something to knit for these two gorgeous girls.


These faerie princesses belong to Buster's brother and are thusly my nieces. I took this picture the other day in the neighbor's yard on our way to DQ for dessert. This really has nothing to do with knitting socks, I just wanted to share with you this picture of my wonderful and super duper awesome nieces.