(no subject)

[avendya]

Socks! Someone tell me about socks!

Or, rather, tell me how one gets started on making them. I am a beginning knitter, about two feet into an Irish Hiking Scarf. I was playing around with some size 3 needles, and really, really liked them. It seems like socks are the most common thing made on small needles, and I would rather like a nice warm, fuzzy pair of socks. (Emphasis on warm -- my goal would be socks that can be worn in the house, instead of shoes, by a person with the world's worst circulation.)

DPNs look slightly terrifying, but they are probably manageable, right? Anyone want to give me pattern recs? The nicest looking pattern I've found is the skew sock, but oh dear god complicated stitchwork. (At least to a beginner.) A Coraline sock looks less terrifying, but also less pretty.

So: should I avoid socks for the time being, and knit a couple other things that use increases/decreases (the Saroyan scarf comes to mind), or try to make socks anyway? And, if I should knit socks: pattern recs?

Comments

[kuri]

The part of using dpns that's at all tricky is the cast on. There's risk of twisting the cast on, which will give you a mobius cast on instead. But once you're a couple of rows in, using dpns is no different from straights: you're never using more than two needles at a time. Personally, I find it much easier than magic loop (hate moving stitches around on the circs so frequently).

I'm a big fan of toe-up socks because you can try them on pretty easily and if you do two at a time, you can use up all of your yarn without any worry that you'll run out on the second sock before you finish the toe or whatever. But I prefer the cuff-down style of heel (with a heel flap), so I put a heel-flap heel on my toe-up socks, a la the Beaudelaire pattern. The sock police haven't arrested me yet. :P