Knitting - Socks

It's been decades, literally, since I've knitted socks. It just never seemed important enough to take the time to knit those when one can buy then and I figured I'd rather spend the time knitting for the boys when they were little and lately knitting scarves and mittens and goodies like that, but the wanting to knit socks again has been lurking in the background so at the end of last year I bought some yarn from Michael (Sock-Ease) and figured I'd give it a go again. Never got to it though until February!

First time doing toe-up. I like the idea of simply dividing a skein of yarn in 2, then start knitting and stop when the yarn runs out at the leg. I hate the idea of knitting a sock only to run out of yarn a few rows from finishing the toes.

I used a pattern for a basic sock. Nothing fancy while I figure out the sizing. I used this pattern on Ravelry as my starting point and am pleased with how it turned out. However it is too big for me so I did not cast off at the leg. The yarn did not turn out looking as nice as I had hoped. But it isn't exactly ugly either.

Next I decided to knit a 12 sts swatch just to see how that would look and what the gauge difference is. I do like the resulting weave I got so am thinking of changing the needle size first.

Here is the swatch on top of the sock, The yarn wrapper calls for 2.75mm needles. The sock was knitted with 2.25mm and the swatch with 2mm. That is quite a difference!

Anyhow, I'll make comparisons and careful measurements and see how it goes. I do have a ball of beautiful purple sock yarn waiting for me too...