Spiral socks and knitting belts

The cold weather is fast approaching and wooly socks will be required before too long.

I needed a bit of easy knitting as the other projects are complicated and require some concentration and good light.

These are from a nice little book 'easy knitted socks' by Jeanette Trotman. I'm knitting them for myself in Noro Silk Garden Lite on two 3.5mm pins. There is no heel to turn. They are simple spiral rib tubes. It is knitted in a basic 2 x 2 rib, which you shift by 1 stitch on every fourth row. These are spiraling anti-clockwise as I am a left-handed knitter and simply followed the pattern instructions.

The pattern describes a method of knitting in the round with a long circular needle. I can see the point of only using 2 double pointed needles for this as it is much easier to keep track of the rib pattern on only two pins. Three, which I tried and failed, does make it tricky to see exactly where you are up to. However as they are only socks it seemed straightforward enough to use two double pointed needles and to knit onto a third. This is a traditional Shetland technique for knitting seamless sweaters, as it prevents the possibility of loose stitches in the middle of the sweater. In Shetland they used a knitting belt to support the third long steel knitting needle. Although I use circular needles for most of my work I still use my knitting belt from time to time.

The photo shows a detail of a child's sweater and the knitting belt.