Textile Sanity: Tony's Socks

I tried to darn my husbands old store-bought house socks. Disaster! First, repair yarn was too thick and really, the socks had just too many holes. They are after all 20+ years old.

Then I saw the Bulky Sleep Sock pattern from a class at Yarn del Sol. Loved the simplicity. So I bought yarn, Plymouth Yarn Encore Chunky, and started this week on my very first pair of socks.

Tony's socks are grey with brown toes, heels and cuffs.

My first short rows and provisional cast on. Neither was as difficult as I thought it would be. Although...

My provisional cast on using a crocheted chain gave me a little trouble. As you can see in the center of the photo below, I split the gray yarn of the crochet chain when I picked up the new stitch in brown yarn. It meant that when I finished the short row toe section I could not unchain the provisional cast-on easily to pick up the live stitches. I had to cut the yarn at each split stitch. There was more than one split.

I worked both socks concurrently on different needles. One sock with magic loop and the other with 2 circulars holding stitches and a third circular for the knitting.

I only had the right size needles in circulars of varying lengths. It is a little spidery but it's working out.

A whole toe! And if you look carefully some of the picked up stitches from the provisional cast-on chain are twisted (right side of brown toe at the color change). I guess I picked up the wrong leg of the live stitches. I didn't see it until I'd knit several more rows. I was able to place them on the bottom of the foot. None the wiser!