Drink, Feck, Arse

Right after I finished the last post, I realized "Crap, I have a knitting deadline". I agreed to knit a little pair of socks for another crafter's little girl (I'll post the link to her Etsy shop at the end, I don't know how to change the hyperlink to say her name instead of the whole address). I thought I had a lot more time, so didn't start the socks until the last minute. I managed to finish a pair with no problems a day and a half before I wanted to deliver them.

I'm a perfectionist, and even though we were trading, I treated this like it was a job someone was paying me for. Katie isn't a knitter, so I'm sure she wouldn't have spotted tiny mistakes, but I wanted these socks to be perfect.

I looked them over, and saw some little holes by the heels where I picked up stitches after I did the short row heel. I thought it wouldn't be a problem, that I could just tighten them up, but I didn't want the socks to look patchy inside so I decided I'd thread in a lifeline, and cut the heel out and carefully unravel it and do an afterthought heel instead. I was a little nervous about this but I took a deep breath after I put in the lifeline and snipped. Here's what it looked like pre-snip:

What a dumb thing for me to do! I must have snipped it in a wrong place beause I was having a lot of problems picking out the yarn without yanking stitches I wanted to stay intact, despite the lifeline. Not having a lot of time left, I accepted defeat and just started a new pair of socks outright because I didn't write anything down for the other socks so couldn't remember how many stitches I'd cast on, or where I made my increases and decreases.

Here's where I work in the post title: I arsed up the heel, so I said "Feck!" and felt like drinking. Instead, I busted ass and knit both the socks at the same time. I'm not clever enough to do both socks on two circulars, so I did them each on one circular doing the magic loop method. I'd work a few rows on one sock, then a few on the other. This of course made it feel like the sock would never end, but it ensured they would look the same and I wouldn't have to cast on for another sock and possibly not finish it. I did these with an afterthought heel.


Here they are knit up, toe grafted, and with the waste yarn cut with the live stitches waiting to be placed on the needles. To do this I worked the cuffs as long as I wanted them, then knit across half the stitches with the waste yarn, turned my work to purl back over them, then picked up my working yarn and kept knitting the sock down to the toe. I grafted the stitches together after I decreased to the number I wanted. Some hate grafting toes closed and will do anything to avoid it, but I actually look forward to it because it means I'm at or very close to the end point of the sock.

Katie loved the socks, and her reaction was worth scrapping the bad socks and starting over. I really enjoy making things for people who value hand made gifts. And, I got two lovely customized sweatshirts for the boys out of it, which I totally forgot to take pictures of them wearing.

Here's some yarny goodness drying on my radiator. The colors are courtesy of lemonade and orange flavored kool-aid, the yarn is white Regia 4 ply.

I'm off to knit more socks. Happy Holidays everyone! :)