Magic Loop Sock Class

A long overdue update on last Friday's sock class. Once again, it was great fun! Actually, it was a lot more entertaining than the first. Unfortunately one lady dropped out, but two more joined us. Plus another just stayed and knitted with the rest of us.

The table could be divided into two groups. At one end headed by Kathy, our kind and gentle teacher, were the mindful and quiet students. At the other end headed by one of the owners, Annette, were the loud, can't get too much fun, unruly crowd. :-) Well, you couldn't expect anything less than a party when it was also Annette's birthday on Friday! There were cakes, cookies and tea for all. Plus a new sensation in town. Cupcakes! Actually, only one was brought in for the birthday girl. I didn't have a bite. But from the looks on the ladies' faces this little thing called "Red Velvet" was heavenly. I knew where it came from. Sprinkles Cupcakes. I actually went in when they first opened and there were hardly any customers. But I heard that now the wait could get as long as an hour! So on Saturday we took a little walk to the store and this is what we saw!

Anyway, back to the class. We found out it was a no-pattern-class! Guess nobody read the sheet of instructions that we got on the first day. It didn't contain an actual pattern. Great! And I do mean GREAT! It wasn't my desire to knit without a pattern so soon in my knitting adventure. Now that it's done, it's not so bad! Not bad at all! All we had to do is figure out our foot circumference and how many stitches to cast on. That's it! That's all the numbers we needed to figure out. The rest is so easy. Knit the length of the legs, then knit back and forth for the heel flaps. Just knit square shaped flaps, or measure the distance between the bottom of your foot and the bottom of the ankle bone and knit that much (OK, one more measurement.) Turning the heels is so easy too! Just figure out if you want wide or narrow heels and just knit. No math required. I won't go into details of turning the heels. Any sock knitter would know that! One thing to note is to not knit the last row on the first heel turn. Go to the second one and knit until the last row then knit across both heels. Then you are ready to pick up stitches and knit in the round again. That is our next lesson. Sounds really easy but the sequence of what to pick up is still fuzzy to me. The good thing is that no big math involved! Can't wait to get back in class. Oh, since everyone was having problems knitting both socks fast enough, we added another day to the class. Yay! Kathy is so nice. By the way, Kathy is an assistant editor for Spindlicity, and a committee member of Greater Los Angeles Spinning Guild.

After the class I met my partner and our friend Peter for a bite at Raku in West L.A. The owner is a Japanese/Korean lady, so the dishes incorporate both styles of cooking. The scallop sashimi was super sweet and delicious. Cabbage rolls and stewed pork were a must try. Everything was good and most dishes are small and reasonably priced. One caution, if you like monk fish liver, eat it with other raw food. It's a bit too fishy.