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Monday, April 20, 2020

Sock Journey - 2-at-a-time socks


After knitting many pairs of socks and feeling like I had achieved some level of mastery of several techniques, I thought I'd try making 2 socks at once using the magic loop method.  Sounds interesting and so I set about watching videos of experienced knitters on YouTube for their tutelage.

First hurdle - how to get 2 balls of yarn out of one skein.  As the yarn I used was self striping, I needed to have to 2 balls start in roughly the same color.  I wasn't going to be excessively worried if it wasn't exactly the same.  Close enough is good enough was my mantra!

Here's how I did it.  Weighed my skein (98 gr.).  My little kitchen scale was a great help here.  Pulled yarn from the outside until the main skein weighed approximately half of the original skein.  Then looked at where my initial yarn started and found the same spot close enough to the yarn on the scale.  Then cut the yarn.  Started winding the yarn that I had pulled off the skein from the end where I cut it.  That way the start of the yarns would be the same.  I ended up with 51 gr ball and 47 gr.  skein.


I was working with a toe up pattern, so I needed to cast on for the toes.  Found this informative video that was perfect.  Cast on 2 at a time socks on Magic Loop



Everything went well until I hit the heel.  I had to do a little maneuvering of stitches and ended up doing one sock at a time for the heel.  Once each heel was completed, I worked the stitches for the remainder of the sock and it worked out wonderfully.  





 







 For a cuff bind off I used Jenny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off.




I enjoyed this method of making 2 socks at once and I'll try it again when I make my next pair of socks.