The stitch pattern I used is from here (pdf). The whole thing is knit on size 10.5(US) needles. I basically just knit up a wide long rectangle, and then sewed the ends together when it was enough to wrap around my head.

The pattern takes a while because of the knit3tog splitting my yarn if I didn’t pay attention to it, but the wrong side is just knit, so that goes pretty quickly.

The cuffs were a pain in the ass because I had to learn how to do an elastic bind off because the usual bind off I did made the sock opening too small. I had intended these to be ankle-length socks because I don’t like wearing super-long socks all the time. Unfortunately, I misjudged how long the cuff I knitted was and by the time I bound off and tried on the sock, it was shorter than I thought. Still wearable, but next pair of ankle socks I make will be longer.

The fabulous yarn was purchased at Stitches from the Heart and called Sockotta. I liked the colors when I saw it at the store, but wasn’t sure how they would knit up, so it was a pleasant surprise to see the stripe and spotted pattern emerge.

I’m loosely following the wise needle sock pattern but cast on with the magic cast-on I learned from Knitty. The sock was tricky to start at first because the stitches were so close together, but it got easier.

I also purchased a new set of needles at the same yarn store. I already had size 3 needles, but the yarn called for size 2. I guess I could have tried it with size 3, but I wanted to eliminate as many complications as possible from my first pair of socks so that I don’t get discouraged. There’s something magical about bamboo knitting needles that just makes me want to never stop knitting with them.

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At first, I didn’t like the wrong side of the scarf because it was all purl’s, so I frogged it and restarted it with a ribbed-type pattern using the same stitches as My So Called Scarf, but then it was too narrow and the ribbed stitches looked too structured.

So I ripped it and did the original pattern again with just a slight modification: slipping the end stitches each time a start a row instead of knitting/purling them. I find that when knitting scarves, slipping the end stitches of each new row makes the edges of the scarves straighter.

The store is pretty small, but they have tons of yarn. They have more acrylic yarns than most boutique yarn stores, but they also have alpaca, baby llama (oooh so soft), wool, and novelty yarns.