The Socks of Terribleness!

The reality of being a novice knitter is that most almost all of what I make is completely terrible. I mean, COMPLETELY terrible, wouldn't be seen dead in it outside of the house, dear god why am I so bad at this TERRIBLE. Somehow though I find this to be a weird source of joy with little knitting projects, even though it drives me mad with that one partially completed jumper that I'm (still) knitting a year after I started. This perverse delight in imperfection is the reason I am actually quite delighted to show off the Socks of Terribleness (SoT).

Behold the Socks of Terribleness!

The SoT started life as an actual sock kit from Lidl (a discount supermarket type place) and set me back about €5, give or take. In the pack, I got four balls of 4 ply (fingering) yarn and a totally incomprehensible sock knitting pattern that seemed to have been translated ineptly from [language unknown] to English and various other languages. I have to be honest, I couldn't make head or tail of the pattern that was provided at all, and decided to use a free pattern I found on Ravelry instead, the Lion's Brand Basic Sock (Ravelry link; Lion's Brand direct link). As it turned out, I needed less than 2 balls of yarn for this particular pair of SoT. In theory, therefore, the kit could easily spawn SoT: Son of SoT, although I think I want to give myself a break from socks for now.

I used the magic loop method of sock knitting, mainly because I don't own double pointed needles and I do have circular needles. Plus, a friend mentioned it in passing as her preferred sock knitting method and as she is an actual Good Knitter I decided she must be on to something. Never having tried DPNs I can't speak for whether magic loop is easier, but it definitely seems to have some advantages when you're an inept novice, in terms of stitches not falling off the ends of needles. I wish I could say I could remember how I figured out the basics of actually doing it, but as far as I can recall it was just a case of a series of sketchy Google searches. One resource I did find particularly useful was this lady's YouTube channel, which has really easy to follow little tutorials for key parts of the sock, like turning the heel and the sock gusset. I watched each of them at least twice for each sock.

One thing that amuses me is that not even all Socks of Terribleness are made equal. I know in this shot they look like they are even different sizes, but this is not actually the problem with them. In fact they are more or less identical from a dimension point of view (except for the ribbing) they just don't straighten out the same way to lie flat on my cutting board. However, Sock 1 (on the left), i.e. the sock I made first, is perhaps inevitably orders of magnitude more terrible than Sock 2 (on the right).

Sock 1 has some serious, SERIOUS problems at the cuff with the ribbing. It also has a problem all along the bend in the magic loop, which you can see as a sort of line of flaws in the knitting down the centre of the leg part of the sock. I wasn't pulling the stitches tight at the end of one side of the loop or the start of the next, so I ended up with a column of loose stitches along the sides of the socks. When I started Sock 2, I decided that although the pattern doesn't mention it, I should go down a needle size for the ribbing, and as I was knitting I made sure to pull each of those end stitches on either side of the bend in the loop tight up to the previous stitch. As a result, Sock 2 has a cuff that fits my leg and no loose stitch column. Other than that, my biggest failing was picking up stitches along the sock gusset. On Sock 1 I have one horribly lumpy pickup seam where I went too far into the fabric of the sock to pick up stitches, and on Sock 2 I did the opposite and I ended up with a section with loose, laddery pick up stitches. One bit I did do really well on both socks was the grafting of the toe. Perhaps that's not surprising: it's the most sewing-like part of knitting a sock!

Do I care about any of this though? Not really! My socks are terrible, and I love them unironically. The floors of my apartment are very cold and I normally wear socks and slippers all the time. Now for particularly cold days I add the SoT over my regular socks for an extra layer of insulation and admire them every time I look at my feet, comfortable in the knowledge that they are uniquely awful and I made them all my very own self.