Summer of Socks: It's a Start

Or a cuff, as the case maybe.

In either event, I finally started my first Summer of Socks sock. This morning.

Last night I ended up fooling around online, then when I settled down to knit I realized I had to clean the kitchen. Of course doing that made me rather pissy. Then when I was able to sit down and relax again the closest project was the Yellow Lace Top.

Well, I did manage to cast on about 6 sts last night, but they weren't going well.

I started with the outside tail of the Panda Cotton as the inside tail seemed fairly buried.

It wasn't pretty. Or, more accuratly, I stopped before it got ugly.

As I worked my long-tail cast on the yarn started untwisting on one side of the needle and kinking on the other. Uh-oh.

This morning I jammed the guts out of the ball to find the inside tail and the cast on went much more smoothly.

You can really tell in that bad picture I took (it's a very gloomy day here in NH) but I'm using my new Darn Pretty Needles that I bought at the NH Sheep & Wool Festival.

They are presenting another hiccup. First, and some people may like this, the points are really, really pointy/sharp.

Some people really like pointy points, but I'm not one of them. I can see the advantage for working pattern stitches that pull the yarn tight, but they don't work well with my knitting style. I tend to push the tip of the left needle with my right forefinger and pointy needles lead to a sore finger.

Another issue that they are size US1.5 and I think they are a little big for this yarn. The ribbing is just a wee bit soft, which is fine for the ribbing, but I think won't translate well to the body of the sock.

Now that I'm done the ribbing I'm going to transition over to my faithful Brittany Birch US1 DPNs, which should solve both the gauge and painful finger issues.

Well, I think that is all I have to report at the moment.

Onward to the leg and the pattern stitch!