It's my 1st toe-up sock!

An Owl Sock
Toe-Up :)

With a little technique help from Sensational Socks, instructions for the Easy Toe at Knitty and from this free pattern at Knitaddicted, I have attempted socks from the toe up.

It probably would have been wiser to pick a pattern and actually follow it, this being the 1st attempt.
Instead of making it up as I went along?

But I wound the yarn into 2 balls, hoped for about a size 5 sock and just started knitting.
It's free yarn...recently given to me. (No label, probably acrylic; not a problem as this was practice!)
There's only 36 stitches on size 4 needles because if this method sucked, 60 or 70 stitches cast-on per sock is a lot of damn work.

Previously, I had no interest in giving this method a try as I already have a perfectly functioning method of sock making: from the cuff-down.
Mom taught me and it works well enough. So why bother?

It occurred to me that if I'm able to beat the 128th person in line for Sock Madness, there's a pretty good chance one of the patterns will start off with the instruction: cast on provisional stitches and begin toe. And I would be seriously screwed. Eliminated even.
One of the strictest rules appears to be "Follow the DIRECTIONS! Exactly."

Hopefully this is no longer a problem.

Long, have I wanted to recreate this owl on the side of a sock.
Original pattern motif comes from WORKBASKET Dec 1971.
I liberated this copy from Mom's vintage collection nearly a year ago.
So I could figure out how to cable knit and then put this owl on the side of my sock.

Except I knew very little next to nothing about knitting a cable. And after an hour of attempting to chart out the front of the baby sweater so I could see how to do the owl, it became apparent there was a problem: My cuff-down sock owl would be upside down.

While toe-up socks will not likely become my method of choice. Seriously!
Look at that owl.
Right side up and everything.

I'm thinking a provisional cast-on could be worked just above the ankle for a directional motif (such as these owl cables) and then I could still do the gusset-to-toe sock Mom's way.

Then again, if I knew more about knitting cables I might understand how to just turn the pattern around?