July is over and Fall will soon be on it's way.

Its a nice cool 63* degrees this early a.m. on August 1st.  My cup of tea!  Don't get me wrong, I love summer and I tire of the long months during late winter but my body is prone to go on strike when the mornings start out at 80* before the sun even wakes up.  I also eye-spy'd my first patch of spider-web covered bushes this morning!  That doesn't usually occur around here til end of September or even into October.  Just can't make heads or tails of the seasons anymore. Reason too why I was surprised to see the spider-web bushes is the newscast was just saying the other day that we are too expect summer dog days clear up until start of maybe November. So whats' going on here I ask?

whew, yesterday I remembered just in the nick of time that being the last day of the month that I had an invitation to accept and entered my lot into the
Sock A Month 10 knitting club.

 I had found this group earlier in the month and got started. Photo is my July pair.  It was my first pair of footies that I've ever done. I was a bit scared as it seemed so daunting to do the cuff and than just jump right on to the heel. I was afraid that without a leg it would be too loose and saggy around my ankle. And I used Patons stretchy yarn.  Yes, it IS stretchy. I did find after a bit of wear that the footie tries to sneak off my heel so to fix that I made a pom pom out of left overs and attached it at the heel along with gathering a few stitches on each side of it. Worked out rather nicely.  There's still enough of the 2 skeins left that I'm making granddaughter a pair of short socks, child's size.  Guess what?  She starts kindergarten this year! Gosh she is growing up so fast. It seemed like just yesterday she was just three yrs old.  I thought that once you were a grandma that time slowed down a bit and you got to enjoy more stuff longer. What was I thinking. Time seems to be going faster!

This summer finds me trying to learn how to do 2 socks at the same time on one pair of circular needles.
The book "Knitting circles around socks" by Antje Gillingham is what I started learning on. She does a wonderful job of teaching it. There are 33 photos of all her "how to" steps.  The remaining 40 pages cover about 8 or so sock patterns.  At the end she explains how to convert patterns from double-point to circular needle patterns. Quite useful!  Especially as there are some really wonderful old patterns floating around that I want to try.

I love CIRCULAR Needles to knit socks on. It's not that I love it more than dpn's. I've never even tried dpn's.  It's just that I first learned how to do "a" sock on circulars. AND I LOVE IT!   But I will admit, my brain had a tuff time learning how to do "two" socks together at once and remembering which way to turn and flip my work along with both those 2 strands of yarn hanging around! lol.  But since I love doing the socks on circs of course I have to make myself learn how to do both socks at same time!  Now due to some neurological cognitive issues I don't mind telling you that I spent months trying to get thru this. It twas just not to be.... so it seemed.... ;(   but alas....  I have a little something something that I invented and want to share with you......

 My Needle Position Flowchart
 for 2 socks @ at a time on circular needles
Draft Final Revision Aug 7th 2010

 It's my Needle Position Flow-chart that I came up with to help me keep track! It's just drawn on a piece of printer paper and accordion folded into four sections for quick and easy travel storage.  Wish I knew how to patent something like this. I think it's a wonderful idea.

Now I can easily find my way back in case I grab a wrong needle.  The sequence of which row to do on which sock next diagram is what has saved my sanity from my obsession to learning this task!

I find it imperative to keep one color marker at end of instep row on sock 1 and a different color marker for sock 2 also at end of instep row. This way I know that I will be next starting a new round with heel of Sock 1.

The other important thing that I found makes my sequence work so well is that it's.....


MOST imperative to have socks threaded on same needles opposite each other.

What I mean by this is ....

when you lay the needles and work down on a table you will see ...

that the heel of sock 1 is on one end of needle 

and instep of sock 2 is on the other end of the same needle.  

Clear as mud huh?  Well hopefully it'll make sense.  If you click on the photo it should expand full size and you will see more clearly what I'm talking about.

This sequence for me is what works !
Sock 1 - Heel
Sock 2 - Heel
Sock 2 - Instep
Sock 1 - Instep
           than you can repeat for next rounds.

I hope others will also find my flowchart useful while trying to learn.

well, that's bout all for the moment. tah- tah for now.