So, despite saying that I couldn’t finish the Having Hope socks before our anniversary, I decided to try anyway. I was with Mr B a lot over the weekend, though as he doesn’t notice what I’m knitting unless I wave it under his nose, I knew I could work on the sock pretty safely in his presence. I knitted a few rounds waiting for a train on Saturday morning, and had a cute conversation with a small girl who was interested in my “sewing”. I explained that it was knitting and was a sock, which she said was very big. I pointed out that it was for a very big foot.

I spent the next three days knitting, and was on course for them to be handed over on Tuesday evening. But in the end, I was undone by my compulsion to block every present. The second sock was off the needles at around 2.30pm on Tuesday and I still had them drying on their blockers with the fan going full blast at 7pm. When I realised that having socks on the bedroom floor is a bit of a giveaway for a surprise present, I gave up. Mr B was briefly handed a pair of damp socks to admire and then they were left to dry overnight to be worn the next day.

Pattern: Having Hope by Diane Mulholland
Yarn: 1 x 110g Middlearthknitter Yarns Sock Yarn (80% bluefaced leicester, 20% nylon), custom colourway
Needles: Knit Picks 2.5mm 80cm long circulars

I used almost every scrap of the yarn to knit these. I didn’t realise just how much I had used for the first sock until I was knitting past the heel on the second and noticed that the remaining yarn didn’t seem to be as much as I thought it should be… I weighed the first sock and it was over 50g. This was obviously not good, as I was working on the basis that I had a 100g skein of yarn (and learnt an important lesson in that I should weigh yarn BEFORE I start knitting…). Probably a little too late, I weighed the remainder of the yarn, knit a pattern repeat and weighed it again, which reassured me that it would be a close thing, but I should have enough yarn to knit the second sock to the same size as the first one and wouldn’t have to frog part of the first sock to make a matching pair. And I did, with about 2g of yarn left!

The yarn is a delicious BFL and nylon blend which is softer than “regular” sock yarn and blooms A LOT after washing. I need to use a yarn with nylon in it else the socks don’t last five minutes (you really don’t want to see the state of Mr B’s Jules socks..!) so it’s nice to have a yarn that doesn’t feel like it’s made of barbed wire.

The pattern was a delight to knit and beautifully written. I would never have knitted such an intricate design for men’s socks before, because of the amount of work involved. But the end result looks splendid and Mr B loves them, which makes it totally worthwhile and now I want to knit some more fancy manly socks.

Plus I’ve learnt Magic Loop which was almost as much of an epiphany as learning to knit socks in the first place. I love this method! Going back to dpns seems very strange now. I suspect I’ll be Looping many more pairs from now on.