Hand-knitting socks/hose

[Tobus]

Very good stuff. I’m going to start knitting as well. My dad used to make Aran sweaters. I wish I’d learned from him before he passed away. My mum is going to teach me. Should be interesting as I’m a lefty. I want to knit some of the pairs of socks I see on the forum and traditional kilters. I’ve usually got some time between when I eat dinner before my
stomach settles enough to play my bagpipes.

Go for it! Just in the few short months I've been knitting, I've found that it's a great way to fill those idle bits of time between other routine tasks. And I find it to be a relaxing way to settle in for the evening. I'm not much of a TV watcher anyway, so it gives me something to do while hanging out with the wife and dogs in the living room in the few hours before bedtime.

I can't advise on knitting as a lefty, but in my experience it's not a technique that is necessarily specific to a dominant hand. Each hand has a task, and it's more about the fingertips working together to feed the needle into the stitches, loop the yarn, etc. And there are multiple ways to do it (i.e. continental style versus English style, etc.) which use different hands/fingers to achieve the same end result. The most important thing, in my opinion, is to always knit from the left needle onto the right needle. If you do it the opposite direction (which some people do), it will be very difficult to follow patterns or instructions or follow videos for different techniques. Honestly, knitting is going to take a bit of learning what your hands are supposed to do anyway, so I would very much suggest experimenting with the various methods to find what works best for you ... but keeping the direction of knitting consistent with the norm.

I'll also say that aside from learning all the techniques and such, the biggest thing I had to adjust on my expectations for knitting is the time it takes to get anything done. If you're only knitting for a few minutes each day, it can take weeks or months to finish even a small project. For example, even with a thick yarn like worsted/aran weight, a pair of kilt hose will take somewhere around 24,000 stitches to complete. I'm not a super-fast knitter, and I only get to knit for about 1-2 hours a day, so it takes me two weeks to make a pair of crew-length socks. It takes more like a month to complete a pair of tall boot socks or kilt hose length socks. I've had to learn to be patient and just focus on the project stitch-by-stitch, avoiding my usual temptation to set schedules and timelines for reaching certain milestones on my projects. My speed is picking up, but still... knitting is not one of those instant gratification type activities.

I finished this pair of socks a few days ago. Two weeks worth of knitting. Now I'm going to go back to a fingering-weight yarn for the next pair, which will make a thinner sock but take way more stitches to complete. So much slower going.