Second Sock LAL

January 2008: Plushy Slipper Socks

These are the house socks I knitted as part of the Loom-a-long on Ravelry.com. I didn't have the recommended yarn so I used some acyrlic yarn I had in my stash. These were knitted using the blue (24peg) Knifty Knitter loom.

Since the Knifty Knitter looms are the easiest to get most the Loom-a-long (LAL for short*) projects use them for the patterns. This means they all have large gauges and you have to use bulky yarn. I find for some projects this means the items come out too big or loose. I love the KK looms for simple hats, blankets and scarves but no so much for detailed projects. So the socks? Way too big.

*For those who don't know the LAL group is dedicated to teaching looming techniques.

First Pair of Socks.

So I am finally getting around to blogging my projects. Today's post is about the "first pair of socks". I knitted these on a 40 peg fine gauge loom from DA looms. The top one was knitted "cuff down" while the bottom one was knitted "toe up"; both used the twisted (e-wrap) knit stitch.

These where an experiment to see which method I preferred to use. Cuff down won, so in future I will looking for cuff down patterns. I find it much easier to bind off the toe then the cuff.

I believe I will need another sock loom as well. While the loom is the correct size for a person with 7 1/2 feet, my feet are wider then standard. This causes the pattern to stretch unattractively. Also longer cuffs for "short" socks will be needed.

As part of the learning process I discovered that one should always have 2 skiens of yarn for the main body of the project. That's why the socks are reverse color, I didn't have enough yarn to make them the same. Of course I like the effect so I will make mismatching matching socks again sometime.