Okay, so maybe “hate” is a strong word, but it hasn’t stopped me from trying.
I’ve made three whole pairs of socks successfully, and even though they take ages to knit, they are never put in the sock drawer for very long once finished. It’s a real catch-22 — love the final product, but the process is just so… ugh.
For optimal results, you need the smallest stitches possible, which for me means using fingering-weight yarn on 2mm needles (US size 0, they’re essentially expensive toothpicks). Because the stitches are tiny, it takes ages to work up even a few inches.
Over the millennia, knitters have devised creative methods for sock knitting, such as Magic Loop — a method of using long circular needles (which are more readily available) to knit small circumferences.
I, however, would sooner launch myself into the sun than use Magic Loop.
I instead opt for DPNs (double-pointed needles) or tiny 9-inch circular needles — which makes for much more even tension in my stitches. It’s a double-edged sword, though, as working with those tiny needles sometimes leads to hand pain from holding the set in a tight, pincher-like grip.
When was the last time you even looked at your foot? Feet are so bizarrely shaped when you think of it — so many weird, rigid angles. Your heel is a permanent 90-degree angle, no other body part does that, and it takes some finagling to accommodate.
Most heel-knitting techniques are the bane of my existence. Gusset? Heel flap? No, thank you! I’m a ride-or-die afterthought heel knitter. It’s the only technique that’s consistently worked for me so far (besides no heel at all, à la my tube socks). Marking with a piece of scrap yarn, you knit across where your heel should go, and then when you’re ready you remove that scrap piece of yarn and start knitting the heel, decreasing at the edges until it comes to a sort of point.
The standard is to knit your afterthought heel last, hence the name, after you’ve done the rest of the sock from cuff to toe. My greatest struggle with socks has been ensuring that every part of the sock fits the way I need it to. As such, I prefer to open the stitches while I’m still knitting the foot, and either start the heel early or put the live heel stitches on hold, so that I can make sure the sock is going to fit as I go along.
I feel like socks are a bit like a puzzle, a lot of weird little pieces that have to fit together perfectly to make a recognizable shape. I’m only just getting the hang of the basics now, and hopefully, I’ll be ready for the more advanced puzzles with practice.