A Lotta Whimsy Socks (2-at-a-time)

Source

Material

Malabrigo Mechita in Archangel
420 yard of 100% Superwash Merino Wool singly ply in Fingering Weight (Machine washable, gentle cycle, cold water, do not tumble)
One pair size US 2 (2.75mm) needles OR SIZE TO OBTAIN GAUGE

Let me introduce you to a disease that plagues sock knitters all around the world- Second Sock Syndrome (SSS for short). It is a condition when a knitter uses double pointed needles to finish one single sock and got bored and never start or finish the second sock. This leaves sock number 1 lonely and often without his mate for life, and it never fulfills its purpose because people rarely ever wear socks that don’t match.

My first pair of socks were knitted with such method, but then I decided to try out this 2-at-a-time method. I got severely water damaged book by Melissa Morgan-Oakes named 2-at-a-time Socks from the UW library, it taught me how to get comfortable with knitting with a circular needle, but I couldn’t figure out how to knit the front and back of the same sock first before moving on to the front and back of the other sock (so sock 1 A side + B side first, then sock 2 A side + B side) . Long story short, I quickly abandoned the method she teaches in the book and made up my own.

I realized it makes much more sense to me to knit in the round, so I will knit sock 1 A side, then sock 2 A side, then sock 2 B side, then finally sock 1 B side, thus completing in a full circle. That might sound like gibberish, but if you knit socks with circular needles, you know what I’m talking about. The result of this miraculous method is that you socks will never be alone! It takes longer to finish a single socks project, but once you finish, you will have both socks ready to be blocked/worn!

The pattern I found on Ravelry is called A Lotta Whimsy Socks by Rebecca Mercier and it features two separate cable patterns, one in the front and one in the back. I don’t know if I have mentioned before, cabling is probably my favorite knitting thing to do, and I get to try our two different cabling patterns on the same project!

There are several things I’ve learned doing this project:

– Choose your material composition carefully weighing the project nature. If you are making socks, perhaps it is not wise to choose a single ply sock yarn no matter how gorgeous the color Archangel is. Also the 100% Merino is going to leave the socks with little elasticity and that’s really not ideal for socks.

– The color of the yarns need to be chosen with care when doing a complex pattern like cable. When I go into a yarn store, my eyes are automatically drawn to the colorful and soft plushy yarns. If it didn’t have 3 or more colors in it, it’s very unlikely I will look at it let alone buy it. However, when doing complex pattern, the plainer (or boring) the yarn color is, the better your result will show. I can’t get enough of this Archangel color, but as you will see, the multi colors obscure the pattern more than a single solid color would.

– Don’t be afraid to have leftover yarns. My mistake with this project was that I didn’t want to have leftover yarns, so i just kept knitting and repeating the pattern, to the point where it won’t fit on my chubby legs anymore. Should have taken into consideration to increase the stitches if I was gonna make it into a knee length socks, but that completely slipped my mind. So now, it has to be worn sort of slouch and crunched up at the ankles and the pattern doesn’t show up as well when worn. Ohh well! A lesson learned.

With all these said, here are the pictures of the finished objects starting with a few progress shots! Enjoy!