Very Fraternal Socks

I have rattled on and on about previously mentioned the tube socks that were my first socks, and here they are:


Here are the toes:

They're basic spiral decrease toes (I don't seem to have even got the spiral decreases correct on the right-hand sock -- I think I knit that while hosting SnB).

They're from this book:

which is a very good basic knitting book for anyone first taking up or returning to knitting, as I was (returning to knitting, that is) when I made these socks.

I was basically knitting these for something to knit, and as would be obvious to a drunken sailor you can plainly see, I took little care to match stripes, or much of anything else for that matter. These were "just for fun", and I wore them very little. They wouldn't fit in any real shoes of mine, for one thing. The pink and light blue skinny stripes are leftover yarn from a poncho (there! I said it! I knit a poncho!) that I knit for DD a while back. Someday I'll let you see that, when I've progressed more with my recovery.

They are about to be sacrificed for some "real" socks, socks with heels fer gosh sakes, like any self-respecting sock.

For these socks:



Thus far these are being knit with yarn from a different pair of tube socks that I made for DD, which instead of the spiral rib in the socks above have a straight rib, and thus look very strangely skinny when not on (I won't mention what they most obviously resemble, you've no doubt, with your mind perhaps already thought of that. Anway, I snatched those from her room when she wasn't home and frogged them so fast I didn't think to take a picture of them. (She did kinda OK the idea of my re-knitting them into real socks for her.) So I'll just leave those to your imagination. The only redeeming feature was that I did make some attempt to match the stripes on those.

Anyway, I'm discovering that these "real" socks (pretty basic toe-up socks) are taking a ton more yarn than the ribbed ones. I'm pretty close already to using up the yarn from DD's tube sox, and thus will soon sacrifice my tube sox to the cause.

Here is the heel on the blue sock:


This is my best attempt so far at the Priscilla Gibson-Roberts "yarn-over" short-row heel. I think it's not too bad. The holes at the corner of the miter will be closed up when I weave in the ends (I'm quite used to that, due to my crappy heel-knitting skills).

I think that these are washable worsted-weight yarn (bad knitter, forgot to save ball band), they are being knit toe-up on a 40" US#4 Addi (well, I started on an old set of 4 DPN's -- but now that I've been spoiled by sets of 5 and then became a Magic Loop convert, I can't stand knitting socks on 4 DPN's).

So these are going to be quite thick and warm. If DD doesn't like them I may just take 'em back to wear around the house in the winter.