First Toe Up

As October winds to a close I'm mindful of my Socktoberfest goals. Yesterday I took some time in the afternoon and gathered my yarn, needles, resources, and water. I threatened the boys with death if they made noise and I prepared to attempt my first toe up sock. I've been thinking of this for awhile and didn't like the idea of short rows. The Easy Toe from Sensational Knitted Socks and also featured at Knitty made the most sense to me.

I decided to use some Trekking XXL from my stash ( a new to me yarn) and my KnitPicks circulars and I followed the directions. It wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. A little fiddly but not difficult. I did have a couple of problems. The first problem was that the provisional cast on didn't "unzip" - I had to pull it apart stitch by stitch as I was picking up the stitches. Not a huge deal but kind of a pain. Second problem was that although I had knit 14 stitches into the provisional cast on, when I went to pick them up on the other side I could only find 13. Again, not a big deal. I just did a kfbl on that row to get the correct number of stitches. Last night I did a little online research and figured out that I unzipped from the wrong end and that it is very common not to have enough stitches on the other side so I did well.

Here's my very first toe up toe. I'm rather pleased with it.



I did do a little work on my second Jaywalker. I'm not thrilled with the yarn or the pattern so progress is slow because I'm just not motivated. Casting on for something new and fun didn't help. If I put them together I almost have a complete sock.



I am committed to finishing that Jaywalker for Socktoberfest and pledge to work on it for one hour today. I'm looking forward to working on the Trekking sock because once I get the foot complete I get to do my first short row heel. I'm kind of winging the toe up sock. I increased to my usual number of foot stitches (well, I went up to 68 instead of 64 because I'd like it to be a little looser than my last Regia sock) and I'll add in a short row heel and probably do a k2p2 rib at the top unless I get a better idea or suggestion. I am loving the Trekking colors and shading and I think most patterns would get lost in it.