Earlier this year a friend asked how long it takes me toknit a pair of socks? Obviously, it depends on several factors: the size ofsock, the thickness of the yarn, how much free time I have, whether the sock isplain or is significantly more involved than vanilla, and let’s be honest, howmuch I’m enjoying the project! A pair of baby socks might take me a couple ofevenings, likewise some adult socks in aran weight yarn, while a pair ofvanilla socks will generally take me between two weeks and a month. Once in awhile I’ll fall in love with a project, and will whizz through it, abandoningall other tasks to get them finished. That happened with my Three SirensSocks and I knitted them in under four days, even though they are relativelylarge (UK size 9.5), and have patterning all down the front of the sock. Somesocks linger for months or even years, usually if I’ve made an error and don’tfeel like fixing them, or can’t quite remember what had gone wrong with them.
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| Three SirensSocks |
To try and get a more general answer to the question, I rana poll in my Instagram stories to see how long it took other people to knit apair of socks, and here’s what I found: 9% of respondents took 1 week or less;36% took 1-2 weeks; another 35% took 2 weeks to a month; while the remaining 19%took longer than a month. From that, I learnt that most people take somewhere betweena week and a month to knit a pair of socks.
Does that answer the question though? Different people havedifferent amounts of free time. Maybe the people who take less than a week toknit a sock are knitting for 4 hours a day, while those who take a month onlyknit for half an hour a day. So I asked myself, how many HOURS does it take toknit a pair of socks? The easiest way to answer the question was to time myselfknitting a sock…
I cast on a standard-for-me sock: 64 sts, 2 mm needles (Iknit loosely – I get 32 sts to 10 cm on 2 mm needles), UK size 9 (approximately26.5 cm foot length) in West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4 ply in the colourwaySherbet Fizz (Ithink this colourway is discontinued, current colourways can be found here*),and timed each knitting session as I created a top-down, heel-flap-and-gussetsock.
How long did it take me to knit the pair? I confess I only timedthe first sock, but that took 7 hours and 33 minutes, not including any timeneeded to wind yarn or block the sock, but I did include weaving in the ends.Which gives a total of 15 hours and 6 minutes for a complete pair.
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I do knit quite fast, so it’s entirely possible that youmight take longer to knit a pair, or maybe you’re super-speedy and take farless time. But it did show me that at a rate of an hour a day it wouldn’t takeme more than about 2 weeks to knit a pair of vanilla socks, or a month at halfan hour a day. I should definitely factor this in when planning gift knitting –I always leave it until the last minute and wonder why it’s a frantic hurry tofinish the second sock.
Have you ever timed how long it takes to knit a pair ofsocks? Were you faster or slower?
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