Socks can seem like the Holy Grail of knitting. My Knitting SOS students often tell me that their long term knitting goal is to knit socks and the main question I hear is, “Aren’t socks reeeally difficult?” My answer to that question is always the same…nothing is difficult if you approach it at the right time and it is explained in bite-size pieces.

By the “right time” I mean that you’ll enjoy knitting socks more if you are confident at the core skills of knitting and you should have several small and large projects under your belt. This way you can concentrate on the new skills you’ll be learning with the socks and not have to think about the basics of casting on, knitting and ribbing.

You might also like to knit a basic hat in the round to hone your circular knitting skills before you start working on tiny double pointed needles for 4-ply socks. As for the “bite-size pieces”, well, a sock pattern could be written on one A4 piece of paper, but I’ve broken it right down and written in over several pages, with images, so that you don’t have to approach sock knitting as a risky adventure, but rather as an achievable challenge with plenty of support, hints and tips, and step by step instructions.