Onwards and upwards: my first pair of socks

I always intended to learn to knit socks eventually, but thought they were probably too complicated for a beginner. I had just convinced myself I could do it if I put my mind to it when I came across a pack of sock wool in the german supermarket Aldi. Enough wool for two pairs of socks and a set of double-pointed needles, all for €6!

(There were only plain colours left unfortunately, no lovely stripes like in this picture)

So I gave it a try. I downloaded a free e-book from knittingdaily.com  and used a sock pattern which can be found here.

The pattern wasn't at all difficult, but for some reason it took me three weeks to complete just one sock.I couldn't wait to finish and see what it looked like so I tried it on halfway through:

It seemed fine then but once I had it bound off I tried it on and realised it was too tight. I managed to get it on to take a photo:

It's lovely, but far too hard to get on and off, probably because I doubled the yarn to make the socks thicker. So instead of knitting the second sock, I'm getting started on another pair. I was in Aldi again yesterday and found the last pack of this sock wool on sale for €2.50, so I have a feeling I'll be knitting socks for the next while!