Little red riding socks: Part 3

Last time I wrote about my red socks, I had just knitted the heel. Well now I have a finished pair of socks, hooray!

This pair of socks hasn't been incident-free. Earlier in the week I accidentally dropped loads of stitches when getting my socks out of my bag, and took ages getting them all back on the needle. I thought I'd counted them, but when I got to the ribbing I realised I had lost one stitch. I had a good look at the socks and located the dropped stitch, about twenty rows down the sock. Rather than pull all the way back to the dropped stitch, I carefully carried it up all 20 rows! At least I got to use one of my under-used tiny crochet hooks! There is a bit of a close section from the carried stitch, but it's copeable. And hopefully I've learnt to count stitches after losing all of them...

I decided to make these socks shorter than the first pair - in general I prefer my socks closer to ankle length. Once the sock leg got to 6 inches I added 1 inch of 2x2 ribbing for the cuff, and the sewn cast off. I cast off first half of first sock, then couldn't get my head round finishing the cast off without transferring the stitches to another needle. Instead I threw the final stitch onto a stitch marker and cast off the second sock. And now I have a pair of pretty red socks.

Things I liked about making these socks:

1. Can measure the gauge as you rather than having to make a separate tension swatch
2. My cast off is looser than my long tail cast on, so the socks go on my feet more easily
3. No Kitchener stitching
4. I have two socks!
5. Both socks are identical
6. The yarn has knitted up really nicely and densely

Things I was less keen on:

1. The sewn cast off takes way longer than Kitchener stitching the toes!
2. There's a little pointy bit at the back of the heel that I don't like
3. I need a longer cable on my needles to deal with having all the gusset stitches on the needle - 100 cm will be fine

What's next?
Well, my plan had been to get started on a pair of socks for my husband - one item on my 32 things list. But having worn these socks since this morning, I think they're a tiny bit looser than I'd like. So I think I'll knit myself another pair of socks to make sure I can get the fit right before knitting socks for anyone else. And actually I might have a break from socks for a week or two - my daughter needs a new cardigan, and my son has again requested that I get started on his wiggly worm blanket, so I probably ought to get on with those things first.