Wednesday, July 25, 2012

The law of diminishing yarns

While I was on all those long forested winding roads the other day, I got to knit a lot of sock.  For a couple of weeks now I've just been mindlessly working on socks, changing from cashmere fingering to mohair sport whenever my fingers got bored, and suddenly, near the end of the last forested winding road:


I was finished the knitting part of the second cashmere sock.

Yay for carrying both projects with me because I was able to put down my Cucumber Sandwich Socks and pick up my Red Hot Blues.

La la la, knitting... and then, suddenly:

(no picture available of startling moment)

I realized we were getting Very Very Close to the Rollercoaster Road.

Now, if there is one thing you do not want to be doing on this bumpy winding road, it is picking up stitches around a heel flap.  And guess what I was knitting at the time?  Yep, the heel flap.


Digression:

While I was bobbing around in the lake after this incident, a neighbour I hadn't met yet paddled over in her kayak to say hello and to chat.  (I love this about cottage life.)  Apparently the year she and her husband decided to buy a cottage and got to hunting for the ideal one, they were expecting a baby; they picked the cottage near ours because after driving in on that horrible bumpy Rollercoaster Road, layering carsick on top of morning-sick, she did not want to drive in to look at any other cottages.  I don't blame her.  Also: I now feel SO much better about knitting on that road!

End Digression


So I knit like the wind to get the whole sock back on four needles, and made it with a round to spare.


And thank goodness, because for some reason the road was even more rollercoastery than usual.

You can imagine how I got to feeling pretty complacent about the sock after that.  Partly from beating Rollercoaster Road at its own game, and partly because I was beating myself at mine - specifically, the game where I second guess myself about how much yarn it is going to take to get from cuff to toe on a top-down sock.  Usually I end up with a too-short leg on my socks because I panic early, and lately I've been schooling myself in the art of Not Doing That.

As a result on the drive home later (taking advantage of the moderately less rollercoastery access road) I was all

la la la

knitting my sock

aren't socks wonderful

there is something so earthy and reassuring about knitting your own socks

la la la let's pause for a cookie and

OH NO

noooooo


yessss

Not enough yarn.  No way, no how, not gonna cover my whole foot with this little scrap of yarn.

I panicked for a while, trying the 'knit faster to make the yarn stretch' trick (I swear, all knitters do this at some point, and it doesn't seem to work for any of us) and then I remembered:

I had anticipated this eventuality way back when I bought the yarn.  The solution was at home, but it existed.  Also: I had remembered to pack spare needles to hold the toe stitches, thinking I might actually finish this sock while I was away. (ha.)


la la la, started the next sock.

I'll show you the fix when I get it to a photograph-able state.  Meanwhile: let's all remember that knitting is just knitting, and running out of yarn doesn't have to be the end of the world.  And a good thing too!

No comments: