How, you ask? Well, simply knitting two socks at the same time on one needle is apparently all it takes. Yup, my co-workers now think I am a complete crackpot after I whipped these puppies out at lunchtime on Thursday. (They only thought I was a partial crackpot before that.)
Not too long ago, I bought the book 2-At-A-Time Socks by Melissa Morgan-Oakes. One of my goals this summer for Summer of Socks was to learn this technique. I’m not using any of the patterns in the book yet. I wanted to use a self-striping yarn in plain stockinette and I wanted to make toe-up socks. I could understand the 2-at-a-time instructions well enough just reading through them (since I’m already familiar with magic loop in general) that I thought I could do toe-up just as well on my own using the book as reference if I get stuck anywhere. The pattern I’m using is Wendy Johnson’s Toe Up Slip Stitch Heel Sock. So far, it’s working just fine.
You see, it’s really nowhere near as hard as it looks. If you can knit one sock at a time on one big circular needle, it’s just as easy to do two at the same time. No kidding. (You just have to make sure, of course, that you have a long enough needle — at least 40″ in my opinion. Yes, size matters. Ha.)
I’m really liking the look of the socks so far, even if they are fraternal twins (same yarn colorway, same pattern, but the stripes don’t match up sock-to-sock; term also used to describe socks made from the exact same yarn but each one is a different pattern — or, two socks that look generally alike but not necessarily identical). It’s a self-striping yarn. All that patterning you see in the photo is all due to the patterning in the yarn itself, all I’m doing is knitting along. Wherever you see a color change, it’s all right there in the same strand of yarn. The thing with self-striping yarn is that you can’t always see what the whole length of it looks like just by looking at the wound-up ball of yarn. Sometimes, there’s a little color surprise waiting for you inside. When I bought the yarn, I thought it was just blues, browns and cream. I was just tickled to find some olive green in there when I started knitting it up. I love me some olive green. Goes with my eyes. (Not that my feet will be getting anywhere in the vicinity of my eyes all that often.)
The yarn is one that’s been in my stash for several months now. I picked it up at Yarns R Us shortly after I started knitting again in December/January. It’s Zitron Lifestyle, and it looks to be pretty much the same colors and patterning as 2 balls of Zitron Trekking XXL I bought shortly after. I wonder if the Trekking has that same beautiful olive green hiding in it…
As if I didn’t already have enough knitting books (and, specifically, sock knitting books), I picked up another sock book at Yarns R Us this afternoon (got off work early, yeah!). This one is The Little Box Of Socks by Charlene Schurch and Beth Parrott. Quite an ingenious bit of packaging, it is. Instead of a book, it literally is a little box of socks (well, sock patterns — you gotta knit the socks yerself!). The box has magnets embedded in the lid flap and box side, which hold it closed but is still easy enough to open when you want to. And inside are all these individual laminated pattern cards for something like 15 different socks. So cute and clever! I want to make nearly every sock that’s in this thing.
But hey, now I’ll know how to knit two socks at once and can get to working on those 15 patterns just that much faster.
