FO : New Skills Aquired

Hello everyone,  Today I have two FO's on the theme of learning new things. The first one is Octopode Pandemonium.  I knit this pattern in order to practice crocheting in the round without dropping or adding a stitch. It was a huge success!!

Yarn was left over STR medium weight sock yarn in the Dragon Dance color way. BTW, have I mentioned I used to think that I hated crochet because I associated it with really cheap, splity, acrylic? It's taken me this long to realize that crochet can be just as nice as knitting if you use just as nice yarn ^^;;  Who knew?
Anyway, loved the pattern so much that I've already cast on another one. Perfect work project because it fits in my pocket and is hard to mess up!

Next up is my Two-at-a-time practice sock. I knit this with random left over  yarn, and they knitted up at pretty different gauges. The pink is red heart  and the yellow is Vanna's choice.  I learned a lot and completed it on my first try, without merging the two socks, so I'm considering this a success. However, I have some notes.

When they tell you that Magic Loop works best with a larger cable needle, that does NOT mean to try it on a 60" needle. Lesson learned.



I'm fuzzy on sock anatomy and had trouble placing the toe decreases as the instructions just said "On the instep" I originally had a stitch marker at the correct place, but removed it thinking that I knew what I was doing. I didn't. Doesn't really matter because nobody is going to wear these socks, but I'm sure the decreases were uneven.

The pattern I used gives nice clear instructions on how to use a cable needle to get these :

In a position for doing the decreases :

I ignored that and just did whatever. Don't have the patience for cable needles. The socks survived.

And thats it. It was easy once I got started, I got really bored towards the end and stopped waaaay before the pattern said to for the toe. (I think I still had like, 14 stitches or something, the pattern has you decrease to 8). I look forward to making real socks this way.

 

Somehow I managed to consistently twist the stitches on the outer edge sock (the one that you do the purl stitches for ). I'm not sure why that happened, but I'm sure it will seem obvious with time.

That's all. Thanks for reading!