Second-ever pair of socks, complete!

Good news! I've finished another pair of socks, and they have been approved by my kitty!

I just realized that I never mentioned casting these on, I guess since I started them during my little unplanned blogging hiatus in January. So let me start with a picture of the skein, which is Aurora Gnomealis by GnomeAcres. I fell in love with this colorway as soon as it was introduced, and had to wait through a few shop updates to get my hands on a skein.

The pattern I used was Vanilla Latte Socks. It's a top-down pattern, which made me a little nervous since my only other pair of socks were toe-up. Turns out, though, that I had a much easier time understanding the construction of these socks. I think a large part of that is due to having already made a pair of socks, but something about working these socks top-down and trying them on as I went made a lot more sense to me than trying socks that I was making toe-up. With the toe-up socks, especially because it was my first sock attempt, I didn't really have any idea how big or long the toe was supposed to be, since I didn't understand the anatomy of a knitted sock. With my new socks, I felt that somehow starting from the cuff and going down felt a lot more intuitive.

There was one line of the pattern that I had trouble with, and I think this is due to me still being new to sock knitting. When you finish the heel turn, the part where you knit around and pick up the gusset stitches either had me knitting "backwards" around the sock, or being one line off from the instructions when it was time to knit in pattern again. It's hard to explain and I don't know what happened, but it turned out fine. (I'm very proud of myself for not repeatedly undoing my work to fix teeny-tiny mistakes that no one but me will notice and even I have mostly already forgotten about.)

These ended up only a little smaller in length and width than my Naruto socks, but I like the fit much better (sorry, Naruto socks). I can't wait to make my third pair.