So you CAN teach an old knitter new tricks!

So I was on Ravelry yesterday trying to scope out a new knitting circle to join.  Because I live in between Seattle and Tacoma a lot of the groups are located either in the South end or the North end and poor me is stuck in between with no place to go.  So I happened across a forum that has a knitting group "The Renton Knitters" that meets locally (well Renton local) once a week and I figured that was going to be as close as I was gonna get.  So I joined the forum and asked if I could join their knitting circle. 

I'm happy to report that they were very welcoming and it just so happened that they were meeting tonight (last night) in Kent!  Well I was exstatic to be joining a new knitting group - they were even showing a few new techniques that I just so happened to want to learn - knitting two socks at the same time, toe-up socks (two at a time no less), and the magic cast-on - being a self-taught knitter some techniques are not so easy to learn by reading instructions and looking at pictures. 

I prepared my knitting bag with what I thought I would need and made my way to the designated location.  It was a small group - a few people had already left by the time I made it there at 8:40 p.m.  But those that were still there welcomed me and I'm sorry to say that I never did get to learn everyone's name - but hopefully next Wednesday I will get introduced to everyone and will be happy to remember their names.

So the lesson was quick and seemed to be easy, well anything is easy when you have someone standing right there instructing you on what to do.  But I've been wanting to learn how to knit two socks for a while and I was eager to learn this technique, I only hoped that I would remember what I learned when I got home.  I so didn't want to go back to knitting one sock at a time on double pointed needles (dpns) or even circular if I could help it, because everyone knows that knitting one sock at a time (even on circular needles) is very time consuming and from my own experience they take so long that I end up not even doing the second sock - I have at least two different socks still on dpns that have not seen the light of day for a very long time and forget about starting a second one!

So I listened diligently and followed the magic cast-on instructions from Knitty and with guidance from the instructor, I had two toe-up socks started on my needles - how cool is that?  I couldn't wait to try this new technique out on this really cool yarn [Rowan - Calmer 75% cotton, 25% acrylic/microfibre 50g/175yds] I bought about a year ago intending to make a pair of socks for my nephew - at that time was two years old - but never got around to it, well now he's three and I still intend to make him his socks and now I can make them both at the same time.

I went home excited to put my new knowledge to work and after much trial and error, because of course I couldn't remember all the instruction and I kept having to pull my work apart I finally got the toes started and at 12:59 a.m. I finally put my work down and called it a night. Here is what I've got so far:
 


Yep those two triangular shapes are the beginning of
a pair of toe-up socks!