So did I do the next project in the Passap manual? Nope! I went straight to the tube tutorial and made this:

Then I made the beginnings of a sock from the toe up:

I discovered that gusset increases on the sides of socks are doable but hard to keep track of, as you have to keep moving stitches from the front needles to the back. I also decided that top down socks might be easier on the knitting machine to begin with. So this got frogged, but at least I had a gauge for the yarn to work out the length of foot.

Next I needed to know how to do short rows, so I went back to the manual and did enough of the skirt project to pick up the method. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the result, though. The way the manual has you do short rows doesn’t wrap stitches so you get little holes. YouTube came to the rescue. There is a three part video of a woman doing a child’s sock on my machine. After watching it a few times I did this top down version:

I got around the fact that my feet are narrower than my ankles by decreasing four stitches about twenty rounds down from the heel. I expected that having no gusset increases to allow for my high arches would mean the sock wouldn’t go on easily, but it did and fit just fine.

A weekend too hot for being in the studio followed, so I didn’t make the pair until the next Monday. Then I found that it didn’t match the first one. Little differences in tension and row count led to a narrower foot and the stripes not matching. So I frogged and redid the first one. (Note to self: always make both socks in the same session.)

The next step was to kitchener the toe and hand knit the ribbed cuff. You can’t do ribbing in a tube on the machine. The video tutorial shows the knitter doing the cuff flat then moving half the stitches from back to the front needles, with the band to be sewn up later. I’d rather hand knit the ribbing and have no seam.

I also knit two more stripes in stocking stitch before I did the ribbing to make the socks the length I like. That’s why it’s taken me so long to finish them. I’m restricting myself to no more than half an hour’s knitting at a time to avoid stirring up the RSI.

Here are the finished socks:

Next I want to try a toe-up sock again, either with a short row toe or trying a different method of increasing stitches. Apparently there’s a way of doing heel flap heels, too. I’ve a hunch that my super secret special way of knitting socks from graduated yarn will work on the machine too.

I did worry that using the knitting machine would be too, well, mechanical for me to enjoy it, but there is something addictive about the way it just whizzes out the rows. It means you can experiment without having to wait days or weeks to see the result.

And my hands don’t hurt. That’s always a good thing.