52 Weeks of Socks | Week 01: Intersections

Hello and welcome! Todays post is going to be a little walk through in my experience in knitting my first pair of socks from 52 Weeks of Socks published by Laine. For this first week I ended up actually picking the first pattern in the book, who would have thought? When I first brought up this series in my post, 52 Weeks of Socks | Series Introduction, I said I was going to pick pattern from a bottle. I ended up getting my hands on some beautiful yarn that wouldn’t work with just any pattern so I ended up picking differently. The name of this pattern is Intersections (Ravelry) and was written by Marceline Smith. Anyway, here is how it went!

Casting On

I ended up casting this pair of socks in early March of 2023. I ended up using a limited edition color way from TheLittleWolfKnits in her Catamaran base. This pattern is written toe up, which is something I am new to, but casting on and completing the toes went well and flew by. At this point in time I was thinking about having a contrasting heel and cuff, so I wound up a mini skein as well.

The Process

These socks took me some time, not because I was not enjoying them, but because I had a lot of gift knits I needed to get done. I picked them up for a bit then would put them on the back burning, leading to these taking about 3 months. I will say, I really did like working on these socks. The pattern repeat was really easily memorized and even after putting it down for a few weeks at a time I had no problem picking up where I left off.

I think the only downside to working on these socks or frustrations I had was purely my own fault. I ended up knitting these in tandum, which is something I usually do. I decided for some reason to pull from the inside of the ball and the outside to do this. Usually I am smart and split the skein, but I don’t know why I felt it was a great idea to pull from both ends of the ball. This led to tangles needing to be fixed before starting my knitting session. It wasn’t horrible or a huge deal, but it cut into my knitting time and was annoying.

Final Socks

I ended up finished June 30th, 2023! I am in love with these socks. They are my first all over lace socks and I will say I really learned a lot from them. Always split my yarn if I knit in tandem was a huge one. On top of the practical lesson I learned I like doing a heel flap and gusset from the toe up more than cuff down. While I can and do pick up stitches in my socks normally, I enjoyed this process a ton more and it has inspired me to try some other heel, options such as the Shadow Wrap Heel (Ravelry Link). Spoiler alert, I used it this heel last week and I loved it so much. Anyway, I also realized if I do lace I might invest in US 1.5 needles. While they do fit very well while wearing them, I really have to tug to get them over my ankle. Overall, I feel like this first sock was a huge success and I am inspired to keep on going with this series/challenge.

Links to my other socials!