The world's thickest wool socks

I used to love knitting and crocheting when I was younger, but after I started working I forgot about my old hobby. Luckily, one of my colleagues is great with all such things, and she rekindled my interest. So earlier this year I started knitting and crocheting again. It has to be said that my first attempt ended after a couple of minutes, instead of starting with something easy, I decided to make a hat for a friend's newborn... It didn't work out.

A couple of failed attempts later (for instance, I had to throw away what was to be a kitchen towel - it turned out zigzag'ed), my mother mentioned that she had received some felted wool socks, and that this was the warmest thing ever. Well, I'm an icicle, always freezing and my feet are especially bad. So, naturally I jumped on this idea, and wanted to make my own.

I had made socks once before, as a gift for a friend. All I remembered from that experience, was that I swore I'd never do it again because it was so HARD. Well, my aforementioned colleague came to the rescue, telling me about "square socks", which are easy to knit and doesn't require much sewing. Lo and behold, it was both easy and fun enough that I actually finished them! :)

The kitting part was easy. Putting the pieces together the right way was hard. Even with a photo documented "recipe", I just could not get them looking right. I actually had to turn to Marius, who just laughed at my attempts. He didn't laugh so hard, though, once he tried it. However, he did understand the instructions better than me, and in the end he was the one who succeeded. (Which I found totally annoying, but not enough to continue trying to make it myself).

I had previously thought that felting was very complicated and hard work. Instead, it turned out to be extremely easy - all you have to do is wash the knit work in the washing machine along with soap and a tennis ball and/or a towel. (I was given lots of different advice, some said I had to use a towel, others said a tennis ball, so I went for both just in case and that worked out just fine).

Here are the finished socks:


As you can see, I've worn them quite a lot. However, because I'm so extremely cold, I wanted more warmth. And that was the start of my quest - to make the world's thickest wool socks. Up until now, I'd only followed the instructions, now it was time to start experimenting.

I scoured the local store for the thickest wool and I used two threads - having only one wouldn't cut it, of course. :P In felting, it is the holes that make the result thicker in the end, so I made sure to get thick knitting needles as well. I love to use circular needles, because the work doesn't fall of them as easily.

I started this project about a week ago. Unfortunately, I'm prone to carpal tunnel syndrome (at least I think that's what it's called, in Norway we call it "mouse arm" or "mouse illness" because you typically get it from using a mouse too much. I must say I was disappointed when I didn't find a cool English translation for this, but carpal tunnel syndrome DOES sound impressive, though!). This means that whenever I knit, my arm hurts. So it's a slow progress on the socks. I hate that, I want to be able to knit and crochet as much as I want, it's great relaxation and it's fun to do while watching TV or listening to an audio book.

Anyways, here's a picture of what my "world's thickest wool socks" looks like at the moment. It's not much, but I hope they'll turn out warm enough even for me. :) So now you can all wait in anticipation for the result, I promise to blog about it whether I succeed or not!