What? Already?

The January socks are done. Whilst searching for the photos of the socks I came across a picture of the merino yarn and thought it would be interesting to see skein and sock next to each other.

And here they are, my first toe up socks.

Merino wool from Hip Knits. I didn't use the whole skein so the remainder will go into the Scrappy Doo socks scheduled for later in the year.

You can see how they look slightly odd shaped when not on my feet but are very smooth fitting on the foot and leg. As I suspected, the second sock fits ever so slightly better in the leg than the first one. This is due to messing up picking up the stitches on the foot/leg and ending up with too few stitches up the whole leg on the first sock. However, they both fit well, the first one is just a touch snugger, and I will know better for next time.

They feel fantastic on my foot and are a much snugger fit than my standard plain vanilla sock pattern. Overall, I was very pleased with how these came out and will use this pattern for future socks.

Casting on the toe is not without incident and cutting my knitting may give me heart failure the first few times I do it, but the heel is very simple to knit and the cardboard foot template makes things nice and easy. I think I will make the next pair with finer sock yarn and finer needles, record the stitch count on the back of the foot template, then I have templates suited to the sock yarns and needle sizes I use most often.

However, that is for the future as next up is the February sock. Provisionally called Rainforest, its a plain vanilla sock using Trekking XXL yarn and my standard cuff down pattern which was originally from Silvers Sock Class.

Sewing has slowed down somewhat. The trousers haven't moved on much. I've got the hems pinned up. But still no actual hem sewing has taken place and no button or hole has been sewn.