Sock Saga - Pair number 1

Now it is getting close to the end of July, but this story begins in May. The first installment of the Saga is about the first pair of socks I made in a series of sock knitting that took place from end of May until . I have my trusty ol' Ravelry to help me remembering the details since some of this knitting took place 'long' time ago ;)

The first pairs of socks I made were for my (almost) 8 year old daughter Kamilla. I named them 'Yankee Socks' on Ravelry, since she was playing in Rookie league (baseball) and her team was called the Yankees. Serendipitously, the Yankees played in blue uniforms (T-shirts and baseball caps) and I got blue striped (light and dark blue) yarn at the library's yarn swap, and blue is her favorite color! To top it off, I knit on the socks while watching her play baseball.



At first I tried to swing it, starting from toe-up, which is my favorite way to do socks. Especially when you are not exactly following a pattern because you increase for the toe until you have enough stitches to go around the foot. It's very straight forwards. Unfortunately, it's been a while since I've knitted socks, so I was a bit rusty on the increases as well as the cast-on. I then turned to the trusted Ann Budd, who made a pattern for Interweave Knits in the Summer 2007 issue about toe-up socks starting with the Turkish cast-on (my favorite, which she calls Eastern cast-on) for an array of sizes and gauges.

My gauge was 9 stitches per inch (yebb, 9) on a size 0 needles (sturdier socks). Ann's pattern only goes to a 8 sts/inch gauge, so I had to improvise a bit on the number of cast-on stitches (20?) and the final number of stitches (56). The yarn is called 'Cascade Yarns - Sassy Stripes'.

I had the first sock more or less finished (all except the cast-off at the top) when I went on a road trip with my friend Nancy and my friend, who was visiting from Iceland, Ingibjörg. We drove from Ohio to Alabama where Nancy's aunt and her aunt's husband have an house by a lake. We had a great time visiting them and spending time at and on the lake. I couldn't get much knitting done on the way down there (I was recuperating from having being sick with a sore throat), but I finished the second sock when I was there.

The second sock was finished with about a foot length of yarn left! That was close! It means that my daughter has come to an end of an era. These are the last socks I'll knit for her out of one 50 gr. skein of sock yarn. My baby is growing up!