Monday, November 10, 2014

Socks, with a side of Yikes

I asked Gwen to wait a moment before she started to graft the toes of these finished gift socks so I could show you how they look.


But first, I have to show you how they looked, just as I was heading into the home stretch on man sock number two.  Can you believe how far along I got before I noticed what I'd done?


In case you can't quite see it...


Dropped stitch.  Is there anything worse when you're knitting under pressure?  (of course there is, but while we're here at Hugs let's pretend Not.)

Thing is, I was already a little stressed about these socks, because they are the kind you don't know quite how long to make.  Plus I have two or four other pairs of gift socks to do, all of them needing these particular needles. 

Incidentally, it's for this sort of reason that you should always buy many, many sets of your favourite needles lest their manufacturer change the material and shape the moment you become dependent.

No matter, the stitch had to be retrieved, and this is the best way I know to do it when the problem is more than a few rounds back on a set of double points:


Take the spare needle and run it through the round nearest the problem, then pull out the needle for that section and use it to do the same thing for the next bit of that round.  Repeat till all the needles are in place, and then rip it all back sighing, and knit onward.

In the end, you still get a sock, or rather a pair of socks.  And isn't it nice that the stripes more or less match up?


Now to hope they're long enough.  They've got to be long enough, right?


Guess I'll find out in a couple of months.  Hope your projects are coming along well and I'll see you tomorrow!


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That yarn is beautiful! So are the socks!

Mary Keenan said...

Thanks so much, Anon!