Tuesday, February 9, 2010

I Will Finish These Socks If It Kills Me


Talk about second sock syndrome. Last JUNE I started these, using a perfectly lovely and wonderfully squishy skein of Madelinetosh (is it one word or two???) sock yarn in Clematis. Using the “sock recipe” from the Knitting Rules book by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, I cast on fully expecting that in a week or two I’d have a new pair of socks.


Not quite.


I’ve been carrying these around with me for months, knitting one round here and one round there, but no matter what I did that second sock seemed stuck at 4 inches. Infuriating. But after a big push on Sunday night while catching up on Fringe (football? what’s that, exactly???), I made it to the heel. This, my friends, is progress. And none too soon, as one of my first hand-knit pairs recently bit the dust. (As an aside, I’d love to know what people do with the remnants of hand knit socks, when the hole is way too big to fix but there’s still enough sock left that you feel like you should be able to make something out of it. Coasters come to mind.)


In other news, the baby quilt now has sides, and is being hand quilted (when my hands are not busy sock knitting or cat appeasing). Another should-have-been-obvious observation? Hand quilting black fabric is pretty difficult.

2 comments:

danielle said...

That is such a good question....I am not into darning.....but I wonder if we would just cut of the heel/foot and keep the cuff...then knit a new heel/foot in a contrasting color. Then maybe, since it would only be 1/2 sock each - it would be quicker for me to do a "new" pair???!!!!

Karen said...

I have not been brave enough to even try knitting socks yet. I mostly make afghans...but there should never be pressure in knitting so relax and enjoy...the socks will get finished some day
:-) I have faith!