June 2026
It’s time for an update on my knitting Journey,
First off I made a sock! I’ve bought the wool for 4 pairs and I’ve made one single sock. There’s the problem right there, the shopping and dreaming of what wool can be become is much more exciting than sitting and spending weeks slowly knitting up a sock.
My family took a trip to Alberta over spring break and I found a super cute little yarn shop in Airdrie (Polka Dot Creek Yarn) where I chose the perfect souvenir, a sock set in the colorway Airdrie- a super pretty hand dyed purple, white, and teal that came with 2 solid mini skeins for the heels and toes, Immediately I decided this would be the socks I knit even though at this point I had no idea how to actually go about it. My daughter who loves shopping as much as I do and has the utmost confidence in the skills I hadn’t even tried to learn yet also chose sock yarn for the socks I’d make her “for Christmas”, well if I’m making one kid socks I might as well make all 3, shopping is the easy part…
Lets back up, since my last post I’ve knit a really cute Toque (The cat bird hat) where I learnt how to do ribbing, and gained some confidence on circular needles, the chunky wool I used tricked me into thinking maybe I was getting faster so I decided my next step was a tank top. I spent months knitting a very pretty green bamboo blend tank top only to realize once I finally cast off that my resistance to do a gauge swatch bit me in the butt again, its too short and I’m not a fan of the cropped style on me. I was obviously disappointed but it’s a tank top, and I made it, Its a win! The goal was never to create a knit wardrobe, it was to learn to knit and every project I’ve done has taught me so much, and has been setting me up for the final goal-socks!
I took a little knit break and went back to my first love, Crochet for a few weeks
Then jumped right in with my “practice sock” I learned from my tank top that sometimes things don’t quite turn out and I didn’t want to mess up with my pretty Airdrie wool on my first attempt, so I dug deep in the depths of my yarn stash and found a funky self striping sock yarn that I got who knows when, for who knows what. I printed out my pattern (I’m so basic sock- Summer Lee) because I needed the emotional support paper copy and then I realized I didn’t know what any of the words meant…
My first hurdle happened before the first stitch- long tail cast on, I knew there were different ways to cast on, I didn’t realize that some are more suited to different projects, apparently long tail is the way to do socks. This was a quick YouTube search to find a video that went slow enough that I could follow along and by the end of my cast on I was feeling quite confident, until the next step.
This pattern has options for needles, me being completely intimidated by the thought of working with 4 double pointed needles opted for the 36” circular needle option, because I thought that was safe, familiar, easier… after the cast on the first step is ”Now divide your stitches evenly for knitting magic loop.” What does that mean? Thankfully there are instructions, this is a fantastic pattern for beginners and even includes links to videos showing you how to do magic loop, its not nearly as intimidating as I thought it would be. Basically, magic loop eliminates the need to use a tiny cable when knitting in the round by making the longer cable adjustable which is super handy if you don’t have interchangeable needles.
Away I went, I knit my ribbed cuff which I was confident doing because I had practiced this skill on my toque, and the short tank top, then the leg part-just straight knitting which was easy enough, but was getting very tight and hard to get over the cable join on my needles, I struggled through it until I proudly showed off my work to Beth from Birdnbutterfly when she stopped in to drop off a batch of her naturally dyed wool ( We love her, she’s so incredibly encouraging), she pointed out that I had twisted all my knit stitches and that’s why it had gotten so tight. Beth reminded me how to knit, yarn under not yarn over…I’m not sure when I forgot, but its absolutely on brand for me. This mistake resulted in a very tight knit with a lot less stretch than a sock should have, because I was using the long cable I was able to try it on at that point, it was TIGHT and I couldn’t comfortably get it over my foot but I have a preteen mini me, all was not lost they would still be usable as long as I remembered to knit the leg of the 2nd sock wrong as well so they matched.
Turning the heel I had read was the difficult part and I wanted to do it properly, so I switched to knitting without twisting my stitches and actually caught on quickly- albeit confused the entire time wondering it I was actually understanding or just confidently screwing it up. The problem with my short attention span and knitting is every time I set it down my project I forgot where I left off, so when I leave in the middle of a two row repeat it’s 50/50 chance whether I continue the pattern correctly, I’ve been pretty good at guessing and figuring it out so far but this time I guessed wrong, and only realized after a few rows so I ended up with a little section of my heel with the inside on the outside: a little ridge of extra texture, at this point I decided that I was just going to finish my stupid sock and never make it a match, it was the rough copy and mistakes would be corrected on the good copy. I kept going and the rest was fairly straight forward with minimal need for additional YouTube clarification.
TADA! Sock made.
That wasn’t good enough, A single sock feels like a waste, but I wasn’t going to spend the time to purposely do another one with all the mistakes included just so they would match and honestly, I’m not totally sure I could have made the heel with the same oops. So Smelvin was born. He’s wonky, one of a kind, chronically single, and I’m actually very proud of him and my first sock attempt. I’m a firm believer that every mistake teaches a lesson and this lesson is I can totally make a sock! I learnt so many new techniques making this sock and I’m going into the next one much more confident.
