Sweetheart Socks

I did it, I did it!! I finally finished my very first pair of socks! Not just any socks, but cabled socks. That also makes it my first cabled project! And wow, I am so proud of it! It turned out so well! Feast your eyes....

I promised my dear friend I wouldn't show anybody else before giving this to her as a gift, but I just couldn't keep it from my blog because I am so excited about it! Hope she won't mind... but just look at it! The heart really shows, and the cables stand out and they look like how they're supposed to. That's not to say there aren't mistakes. For example, I knitted this with dpn, and I keep getting ladders between where the needles overlap, but only when I purl -when I knit, there doesn't seem to be any problem. Also I have itty bitty holes where the heel gusset starts, and on one of the socks where I attach the new ball of yarn was not done very properly .... but I think these are all small mistakes. The important thing is. the socks are wearable! They were the right socks, they look like socks and I made the right pattern!

I learned so much as well! Besides the most obvious being that I learned the ins and outs of how to make a sock, I think the favourite thing  learned was doing the Twisted German cast-on method. It's so stretchy! In the past for gloves/mitts and hats, I just used the standard cast-on method unless the pattern specifically specified otherwise, and I found it to be really loose and doesn't stretch, so that when you wear whatever with it, it doesn't really 'hold' on. After some careful snooping around, the general consensus of knitters online is that this new cast-on method that I learned is the opposite of all that. Other things I learned was learning what TW2R means and how to do it (I absolutely love the ribbing pattern it creates), learning to read cabling instructions in a pattern and grafting.

The first sock took me a whole week to finish knitting because I kept on having to look this and that up, but the second sock took only 3 days. I hope this means future socks that I will knit won't take as long!

Anyway, to wrap things up, if anybody is interested in giving this pattern a go, here is the link! Ah, I can't wait to see my friend's reaction when she gets the gift!