Knitted Socks

And finally!  A post about knitting.  Coming up to the end of May, I wanted to send my sister-in-law in Canada a birthday gift of lovely hand-knit socks.  I picked the Tyrolean Stockings pattern from an issue of Interweave Knits.  This first photo is the lovely example from the magazine.  Aren't they cute?  Don't they look comfy?

Well, I cast on and knit and knit and knit and knit for AGES.  And I tried the sock on every now and then.  And it seemed a little tight, but not too bad.  See, I was using yarn that was slightly heavier than the one called for, so I used needles slightly smaller to get gauge.  But it didn't quite even out right.  But I figured I have pretty big calves and pretty wide feed, so hopefully they'd fit my sister-in-law fine.  So I finished the first sock and was ecstatic!

Then I had to make the second one.  What a drag!  So I sped through it, never stopping to try it on, and apparently I knew the pattern much better and was working so fast through it that my gauge was even tighter and the second sock ended up about half an inch shorter than the first!  Yikes.  So I pulled it back to the heel and tried knitting looser, which worked to even it out a bit.  But even then my socks were a bit of a disaster.  I can just barely, with mighty struggling, just barely get them on.  And they cut off my circulation.  Not comfy at all.  :(

The leg part, though, actually fits my 6-year-old daughter quite nicely.  So my plan now is to shorten the foot part by a few inches, and she'll hopefully wear them through the winter.  And I ended up buying my sister-in-law a lovely locally made merino wool shirt from Soma which will definitely fit her fine.

Here are the finished stockings, modeled by my daughter.

 See how nicely they fit her calves?  They do look cozy on her.

But currently the feet are still too long.  So I can't yet put these in the Finished Objects pile.