I joined the Yarn Pirate's Booty Club (can't stop laughing at the name) this summer and July was my first shipment. When the package arrived, I was so excited about the color that I didn't even take time to photograph it. I just wound up the yarn into two balls and started knitting. And now I have a finished pair of socks!
These are the Charade socks by Sandra. The yarn is Yarn Pirate BFL Sock in Cupcake.
One of my big goals with this pair of socks was to figure out the process of knitting two socks at once on one circular needle. I bought 2-at-a-time Socks earlier this summer and made some practice mini-socks, but I decided afterwards that I really prefer knitting toe-up rather than top-down. The book only covers knitting top-down, but it was fairly easy to sort out the toe-up process once I understood top-down. I used a #1 40" Circular, one of the Harmony needles from KnitPicks. Seriously, these are the best needles in the entire universe for knitting two socks at once. I managed to destroy a brand new set of #1 Addi Natura circulars doing my practice socks by putting a nasty kink into the cable. No worries like that with the Harmony needles, the cable is very resistant to kinks.
Another goal of my sock knitting right now is to keep it simple. I have plenty of WIPs that require charts and paying a lot of attention. I need easy (but still interesting) sock knitting that I can take on the bus and not worry about losing track of where I am.
Charade fit both of these goals really well. Although the pattern is written for one sock at a time and top down, it's a simple stitch pattern that was a breeze to switch to two at once and toe up. In fact, the switch was basically effortless. The pattern itself is only a two row repeat, incredibly simple to remember. I can attest that it works really well as bus knitting, since we started riding the bus most days soon after I started these socks.
It might be lame to be excited to finish a pair of socks but still:
Also, I think from here on out I'm going to depart from my old style of posting about FOs where I put all the technical knitting details in the post and just link to the ravelry page for the project. I'm a bit swamped for the foreseeable future at school, I'm really behind on posting about FOs, and I think most people who care about the technical details have ravelry access at this point. You can see all the details about this pair of socks on the page for this project in ravelry.
I can't say enough good things about knitting two socks at once on one circular needle. It's easy. It's fast. You're guaranteed the socks will be at least mostly the same (ie no more forgetting how many stitches you cast on because it's so long since you made the first one). And you end up with a finished pair of socks without even really noticing what you were up to. In the end, this has made sock knitting actually fun for me again.
Oh, and my Booty Club August shipment? Same thing happened as in July - didn't even think about taking a photo, just wound up the yarn, and cast on. This time I'm working on a pair of Bloody Mary socks, also by Sandra. She's apparently the master of simple but still interesting sock patterns that are easy to convert to toe-up. Design more sock patterns Sandra!
Too cute! Hurray for Knit Picks for coming up with such great, affordable needles. That technique sounds very neat.
Posted by: Jodi | August 26, 2008 at 04:43 PM
Love them! Great colorway.
Posted by: Carrie | August 26, 2008 at 11:15 PM
Oh Wow!!! I have that colorway and your's is the first I've seen knit up! No pooling either! Awesome! I'm using a US4 options for ML, I agree, the cords are the best! Thanks for the hugs today!
Posted by: Zonda | August 29, 2008 at 03:59 PM
your socks are adorable! i was checking my email a few weeks back when i saw that i got an email from georgia giving me a heads up about the booty club. my boyfriend happened to walk by then. "the booty club? WTF?" so then i had to explain it him oh you know, this girl goes by the moniker of the "yarn pirate" and she started a sock club and calls it "the booty club". cuz you know, booty, like pirate? get it? arrrrrgh?! i think he was real sorry he asked. :P
Posted by: Sandra | September 30, 2008 at 09:32 AM