Achievement unlocked!

[melannen]

I have Knitted A Sock! It's the "basic sock" pattern out of Folk Socks. It only took five and a half years!

I am actually feeling much prouder of the accomplishment than I expected. And, unexpectedly, it even fits! My left foot is warm. Unfortunately I made it out of some strange yarn I bought at a thrift store that's no longer in business, and there's not quite enough in the same color to do a second sock (there's some almost-the-same-color of the same yarn, though.)

And I still haven't figured out the SSK decrease, but, eh, it feels fine, it just doesn't quite look right. :P

And now I don't have any unfinished knitting or crochet projects kicking around and I'm at loose ends.

Poll #21608

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 72

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What should I do?

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Um, knit the other sock out of the pair (even if you will have to use a slightly different yarn color)
53 (73.6%)

Start one of the 19th century patterns out of the book, to wear for cosplay, which was the original plan once you had leveled up Knitter of Socks five years ago.
14 (19.4%)

Start one of the non-sock knitting projects you've been saying you will once sock was done, like that Icelandic sweater you bought all that lopi for.
14 (19.4%)

Good now finish up all your unfinished sewing/embroidery/quilting/naalbinding/spinning/weaving/mending/electronics repair/painting projects before you start something new.
12 (16.7%)

Ticky.
23 (31.9%)

Comments

[chickiedeare]

Ooo, do you knit everything through the back loop? That's how I learned, and it made things really funky for a while every time I tried to level up to a new kind of project. I've been relearning things in trial-and-error stages over the past year or so, but I also work in a yarn store and am surrounded by experts.

However, I still can't tell SSK from K2TBL. So... whatever works.

[ellen_fremedon]

I did this for years! It makes for a very warm, close fabric but also uses about 20% more yarn.

[melannen]

...this would explain why I never seem to have enough yarn for the pattern.

I really do like the result better than what I got when trying to do it American-style, though. I though it was because I was doing it wrong, but maybe it's just worse. :P

[chickiedeare]

Aha! I didn't know that! My issue was that my projects in the round biased like crazy - for hats it was no big deal, but my first half a sock I worked on for a whole vacation, hours of plane and bus time, got through the heel... and it was too twisted and the heel and toe wouldn't've lined up, so I had to frog it all.

[ellen_fremedon]

I had the same issue, but I think I must have been using a different heel turn technique--I made a pair of socks that way that had a wonderful spiral twist all up the ankle, but the heels still worked out.

[melannen]

I think so? I took a "basic" class from a German woman (who did apologize to us for probably confusing us for life!) who was teaching some version of continental, and then I spent many years (pre-youtube) messing around without patterns or from very old books, and then when I decided to try to level up and knit things that were not just tubes or rectangles with very simple increase/decreases, I was using Icelandic patterns. So I think I default to something similar, but not identical to, combined knitting. I tried to teach myself American style a few years back, but I'm not sure I was doing that right either, so I stopped before I learned a different set of bad habits. And I found it a lot harder on the wrists and fingers, too, so I wasn't super invested in retraining.