Learn to Knit Socks....

I know I promised that I was going to post the tutorial for the sheep slippers and still it hasn't arrived. I have many reasons, side-tracked by other crafty pursuits, food poisoning, carpet cleaning and a cranky baby. A varied list to say the least but all are now over and I can get to work.

First things first, to make the slippers you will need to learn how to knit a basic sock. Nothing fancy, just a basic kinda sock knit on double pointed needles. In particular you will need to know how to turn a heel and how to graft the stitches at the toe so the sock looks finished. If you know how to do this already you're in luck. If not then I found some patterns that may help you. I found that Lion Brand Yarn has some great sock patterns. One of them is at the following link and is for a very basic sock. The only problem is you will have to sign up to get access to the free patterns and you may not want to do this.

I also found a couple of other really great sock websites. One has a calculator so it will give you the pattern for the size foot that you need. It's pretty cool and it's called The Knitting Fiend - Sock-u-lator Socks.

This final site is a sock pattern website on steroids! It has just about every pattern for every type of sock you may ever want to make in your life. The website is called Knitting Pattern Central. If you knit you've probably already found it.

All patterns have slight variations in how to make the heel, in particular the flap. Some knit purl for a ribbed effect that helps the sock last from rubbing on the back of a shoe. Don't worry about this, my slippers don't do this at all, but you may want to do it for fun on your practice socks. Also, I don't use fingering or sport weight yarn like some of the patterns. I use regular worsted weight yarn, preferably something with a wool blend if I can find it. I don't like knitting and knitting a bunch of small stitches because it drives me nuts. I use usually less than 40 stitches around for an adult size and you can easily knit a slipper in a day. And I ain't no rocket scientist but that means a pair in 2 days. Not bad in my books.

Alrighty then. You get knitting and I'll get knitting, taking pictures and writing and I'll see you back here in a couple weeks barring additional cranky babies, food poisoning, craft projects, custom orders, etc.