My spare time and thinking went to this

I started working on sock knitting, yippee!

First, a swatch. I wanted to try knitting socks, but without buying supplies. I knew I had a huge skein of acrylic variegated yarn I'd bought several years ago for doing finger crochet etc with the kids on a road trip. I pulled out US3 steel? straight knitting needles from my grandmother's set, and started on a swatch.

After knitting stockinette for a while and browsing through my library knitting books, I realized (1) I'm knitting in the right gauge and (2) I'm supposed to do a sock swatch in the round. Hokay, time to stop with an itty bitty swatch. I love the colors of this yarn.


Fold a little swatch in half lengthwise, roll it up, tie it with the loose ends, and it's a... pincushion! or cushion/roll to hold crochet hooks, etc., I suppose. Not my idea; I read about these on a blog or KnitList or somewhere. It's about 1 1/2 inches high and 1 1/2 inches across. I just realized... I think I can use this for my small stash of eyeshadow brushes and pencils, if I can weight it down somehow. Hmm.


Did I bother swatching in the round? Nope, of course I started a sock, and had a blast figuring everything out. I mixed up the rib so the top is seed stitch, LOL; I was knitting inside out so I deduced it needed to be turned inside out; and I've made some mysterious mistakes at two of the joins on one row -- I still don't know what I did there. I found it interesting that by yesterday's basketball game I could knit in the stands and not mix up what I was doing (stockinette). Cool. I'm using four double-pointed needles, and a striped, coated paper clip as a stitch marker.

I've learned a lot already, and I could just frog it apart and start over, but I'm going to rib for a bit and then bind it off and call it a "swatch becoming a to-go-cup warmer." I want to start again with fresh yarn. Supposedly I'm following the Starter Stockinette sock in Knit Socks!, but of course she writes it for five dp needles and I only have four. This is so cool!