Socks - I get it now

I say this because my Mom's main knitting projects have been socks. I remember going to yarn shops and looking through the patterns, picking out sweaters I wanted. I wondered why she didn't make sweaters and thought that's what I would do if I could knit. After all, everyone looks so happy in their hand knit sweaters (on a beach in the northeast somewhere, often) in the magazines.

Anyway, I've completed 3 full fledged sweater projects, and have two more on the needles. Although I'm fairly happy with how they've turned out, it's tricky. You don't really know what the fit will look like on you until it's done. There's seaming involved, bleh! And it just takes a long time. So I've completed two (and just over a half) sock projects now and I get it. They are quicker, there's no seaming, the construction of a sock is pretty neat and feet really appriciate hand knit socks. They are sooo comfortable.

I'm by no means done making sweaters, I don't think I could get away with that without making Chuck the sweater I've been talking about since the Winter 2007 issue of Knitscene, but I see more socks in the future. For right now my goal is to knit up my yarn stash as much as possible, which I think will mean something more like scarves and gauntlets and a few sweater-like projects I've stocked up for. But once I've cut down the stash enough to rationalize another trip to the LYS, I'm guessing I'll have a new sock project.

Pictures of the two projects I've completed are below, both use Crystal Palace Panda Cotton Print Yarn, which is a blend of Cotton, Bamboo and Nylon. I just realized I haven't yet posted my first complete pair of socks. October is an appropriate month to do so, although I finished them back in August, because the pattern comes from KnitPink.com and the profits are donated to the Canadian breast cancer foundation. The pattern was written by Vegan knitter Kala Hotakainen, who blogs at Vegan Craftastic. The more recent project is Hedera from Knitty, which appears to be very popular, with 1370 projects underway on Ravelry.