Two Socks on Two Circs - Success

I'm having quite the sock-fest at the moment. Saturday night I finished my niece's socks, and Sunday I started on the pair for my sister-in-law.

When I first learned to knit socks, I learned on two circular needles. I never even tried dpns. I really like this method, and have no desire to change. But when I first heard about knitting two socks at once on two circs, and being done with the pair when you reached the end, I found that extremely intriguing. I'd never really had a problem with 'second sock syndrome' till that color-stranded pair I tried to make for myself, but till then I'd only knitted simple socks in self-striping yarn. I wanted to try some more complex patterns, and I got the idea that the more complex the sock, the more likely I was to not want to have to start a new one all over after finishing the first. Anyway, being able to start two socks, knit, and finish two socks, and be done seemed like a grand idea. And there's the bonus of knowing they're the same size ... I didn't enjoy having to count rows, or try to measure a half-done sock to get it the same size as the other.

So I really wanted to learn this method, and when I promised to knit my brother's family socks for Christmas - three pairs in little over a month - I decided that was a good time to do it.

When I ordered the first sock yarn for the Christmas socks, I also got the book Knitting Circles Around Socks by Antje Gillingham, and was considerably unimpressed, for a number of reasons. One of them was that I prefer knitting socks toe-up, with short row toes, and this book does not include any instructions for starting two toe-up socks at the same time - only cuff down.

I seriously considered going ahead and knitting the family Christmas socks cuff down, just so I could use those instructions to knit them two at a time, but the longer I thought about it, the more I realized I really wanted to make them toe-up, and if I wanted to do them both at once, I was going to have to figure it out for myself.

So I did. And here's what happened.

I actually tried this first on my niece's pair of socks, by knitting one short-row toe on one circular needle, the other short row toe on the other needle, then transferring stitches until I had the two toes properly on the two circs to begin knitting. That worked, except that I'd made some kind of hideous mistake when I picked up the stitches from my provisional cast-on at the beginning of the second toe. I'm not sure what I did, but it looked like I had picked the stitches up wrong and they weren't twisted, but were just open loops - so I ended up with a row of open lace-looking stitches across the toe. Not necessarily a bad thing, except the other one didn't match it, and it wasn't what I wanted. I tried to fix it, but failed, and ended up taking that sock off the needles, ripping it out, and just finishing the first sock, then starting over and knitting the entire second sock.

This time, even though my method for getting two socks on the needle at once wasn't what caused the problem, I decided for some reason to try doing it differently. I did my first toe from beginning to end, picked up the stitches from the provisional cast on with my second needle, and pulled that chain out, having my completed toe on the two circs, ready to knit. I marked the 'provisional cast-on side' with a safety pin.

Then I just slid that sock onto the middle of the cables, took two ends of one of the needles, and knitted my second sock toe there. Since you're working back and forth for the short row toe, and only using the same two needle ends over and over, and never having to slide your work down your cable, this worked fine - the first toe just rested hanging on the cables in the middle out of my way while I made the second toe. So far so good.

Then I got done, and ended up with this.




The right-hand sock is properly on two needles, but the left-hand (second) sock has what should be it's 'front' stitches on the 'back' needle, and it's 'back' stitches sitting out there with no needle to put them on. It was, apparently, on the needles backwards. Initially I had no idea why that happened. I assumed if I started them both on the same needle, they'd end up finishing facing the same way, properly on the two needles. That didn't happen.

I tried several things to fix it. First I was convinced that if I simply took the two ends of that back needle, placed them tip to tip and slipped the stitches of that second sock from the left side of that needle to the right side, it would flip it around and have it facing the right direction. I did that, and it didn't work. It was still backwards, just on the other side of the needle. (apparently I suck at that spatial visualization thing - even having done it, I still don't understand why that didn't work). In the end I resorted to running a tapestry needle with a piece of yarn on it through all the live stitches of the second sock, taking it clear off the needles, and putting it back on the right way.

Then I picked up my stitches from my provisional cast on with the front needle, and viola! Everything set up ready to knit in the round.

Initially I had no idea why that happened, but glory and trumpets, just while writing this post and looking at that picture, I figured it out. I mistakenly thought I'd started the first sock toe on the back needle, since I'd picked up stitches from the provisional cast-on using the front needle. Nope. Short row toes are knitted from one starting point in both directions. So the front needle was the one I started knitting from AND the one I picked up the stitches from after the toe was done - it all starts from the provisional cast-on, going in both directions. So ... next time all I have to do is start the second toe on the same needle as the provisional cast-on, and this should work.

Spatial visualization failures notwithstanding.

Let me take a moment here to stress how very important it is that you make absolutely certain that when you start knitting, you are knitting with two ends of the same needle. If you don't, this is what could happen.





After my first round of knitting across both socks, turning, and knitting back, that's what I ended up with. Lovely! I thought for sure I'd been very careful to pick up the right needle end to start knitting - I even double checked! - but the needles suddenly get very maze-like when you've got two socks on them instead of one. And that's the only thing I could figure caused this mess. So I knew I had to unknit that and start back from scratch, but then appeared the next dilemma. In this tangled mess, I couldn't figure out which needle end to knit the stitches back on to, to get back to where I'd started.

I know, I sound so inept, you'd wonder how I ever knit anything ... how hard should this be? Well, whatever. Anyway, of course I chose the wrong needle end, so when I un-knitted the stitches, I still had a similar looking mess. I resorted to Rescue Operation A, used before - running a tapestry needle threaded with yarn through the stitches, taking it clear off the needle, then putting it back on the proper one.


After all THAT, and making very sure I had the right needle end each time I began to knit, I finally got it straightened out.


And by the end of the evening, I had two socks percolating along on my two circs.


So I DID figure it out ... umm, more or less. By trial and error. But it's working, and that's the most important part, for now. And I think I now have all the kinks worked out, and the next time can sail through this procedure without so many pauses for reconstruction.

I think I like making two socks at once, there's only one thing that caused me any grief about the process (once I got it all sorted out and was just knitting around). Working on the first sock of a side - the one on the right after you have turned your needles - is easy. The second one gets a little edgy, because there's no good place to put that first sock out of the way while you're working on the second. First I tried to keep it close to the first sock (I think I read that in the ill-fated Gillingham book - always keep the socks close together), but I found that just bound my needle cables up too tight, and I couldn't work comfortably. Eventually I started sliding the first sock as far down the cables out of my way as I could. That seems to work best, although it quirks up my cables in odd ways. This doesn't really affect my knitting, it's just that I end up with this strange knot of needles and knitting underneath my hands, distracting me while I'm trying to knit the second sock. I'm not used to seeing that, I'm used to my extra needle just hanging there nonchalantly, looking cool - when only knitting one sock at a time. This is far more "fiddly" to work with. I'm learning to just ignore what's not right at the tips of the two needles I'm working with, and that seems to be the ticket.

But, I figure it's like this. Almost any new knitting method is (to me, anyway) fiddly at first. It just takes some getting used to. I'm sure over time it will seem more and more 'normal' to knit this way. I admit at first it was so odd that I considered just biting the bullet and going back to knitting one sock at a time like we've done for many, many years. But after 5 or 6 rounds it began to get a little easier, I began to work out a bit of rhythm to it, and I think the benefits outweigh the fiddliness, so I'll probably keep trying this method for awhile.

I admit I was kind of astounded with it, once it started working. Every round or two I'd stop, lay the socks out in front of me, and say, "Wow - two socks at once!" But then again, I'm easily amused.