So I’ve been working on this sock . . . (so what else is new?). And as soon as I saw how the yarn was patterning, I wasn’t super happy with it. You know how it is with self-patterning sock yarn, right? I thought it was going to stripe, but instead it turned spotty on me. Did I listen to my gut instinct and quit knitting it before it got out of hand? Oh, no. ‘Course not!
Anyway, I decided to try an afterthought heel, since I’d never done one before. So I put in a line of waste yarn where the heel would go, and finished the rest of the sock. In the pattern loose guidelines I was using, it said to do the toe decreases until 16 sts total remain, then graft the toe. Which I did. And I thought to myself, “Self, that toe looks awfully pointy.”. And again, did I listen to that inner voice and rip back a bit? Nah.
On to that afterthought heel . . . Got the waste yarn out and the needles in (I was using a long circular for the whole thing, by the way). Started knitting along, and discovered a row or two after the heel started that there was a big gaping hole at the corner. On both sides. And discovered that I didn’t have the right number of stitches anyway. Grrrr. So I ripped back a bit and winged it. Pattern loose guidelines say “continue with decreases every other row until heel is desired depth”. Wha? I dunno how deep my heel should be! So I went along until I had about, oh, 30 or so stitches total left, and grafted the heel according to the pattern loose guidelines. At which point I wanted to throw the stupid thing across the room and stop sock knitting altogether. (for a second, anyway. Then I came to my senses!).
Here’s the photoevidence.
At first glance, it doesn’t seem so bad . . .
But if you look close up, you can see the botched “heel junction” (I don’t know what the technical term for where the heel decreases is called)
I thought maybe when worn, the pointy toe and pointy heel would stretch out a bit and not be so pointy . . .
I was wrong.
This is bad. Very bad. And I call myself a sock knitter! Hopefully Alison won’t toss me out of the upcoming sockapalooza for this . . .
Anyway, what I’ve decided to do is to knit sock#2 differently, with a non-afterthought hourglass heel and a less-pointy toe, and see how I like that. If it is acceptable, I will rip bad sock #1 and reknit it in the same way as #2. If I don’t like it, I’ll just mark the whole thing up to experience and hang the bad pair up on my corkboard to torture remind myself about what happens when sock knitting goes bad. And to remind myself that when the yarn doesn’t speak to me even a little bit, that maybe it’s ok not to go forward!
Other News (this time good)
Did I tell y’all I was knitting the Airy Scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts for my friend Nicki for Xmas? No? Jeez, first I call myself a sock knitter, then I try and pass myself off as a blogger. Hmph. Yeah. I’m such a knit blogger that I totally forgot to take a photo either in progress or finished*, and ended up lucky enough to get a very poor shot of it being worn:
Can you spot the Airy Scarf in this picture? I didn’t think so.
*I generally don’t make New Year’s Resolutions because I tend not to keep them, but in 2005 I do resolve to keep a camera with me while knitting and take lots of photos for you to see. And to document finished objects, too (a parital list of those for 2004 is forthcoming).
Next time: 2004 “stuff I knit”, and a scary and cute microorganism. And maybe some more sock stuff.
