me vs. the sock

This post might also be appropriately titled "beginner's luck."

As noted previously, I finished the first of my pair of socks for the sockapaloooza. It's lovely (in my humble opinion).

see?

I have to admit that if I were to do it all over again, I would not have gone with this yarn (at least not in this color) because the white nylon that's worked into the wool shows through. Some would say it gives a nice fleck of white here and there, but I say it's not supposed to be there and makes an otherwise dark-hued sock have strange white flecks. Anyhow, it's done, and I love how it turned out - I amaze myself.

So...I started the second sock, and it was going along well. There's, again, a tad gauge issue - this sock is a teeny, tiny bit wider than the first one, but not enough to be concerned. I sat down Friday and knit the heel, but...as I was looking at it on Saturday, it just wasn't right. On the first sock, I got the short row heel to turn out fine. I have decided that I did the wraps a little bit wrong, causing for a small weirdness, but even that is okay. No holes. No strange blobs. Short row heels are easy, I had decided. ...But for some reason this second one didn't turn out so well. I don't know what I did wrong, but there were holes at the corners of both sides of the heel. Hm.

So, I ripped out the heel. While wasn't exactly the best of thoughts, because - since I had encountered absolutely no problem with the heel on the first sock, I hadn't put in a lifeline, and I didn't feel like running needles through the stitches to which I wanted to rip - I just ripped and picked up the stitches when I was done. Just a lesson learned - don't rip out your knitting when you're at the intermission of a play. You never know when the intermission will conclude, the lights will go out, and you'll be only halfway done putting stray stitches onto needles. You will then spend the remainder of the play attempting to concentrate but worrying about your poor orphaned stitches, just waiting to fall to pieces. Such was the case with me on Saturday. But, I survived, and all the stitches got back to where they were supposed to be.

I tried to make the heel feel bad by not working on it Saturday night. Instead I finished the Hermione mitten, which wasn't as awful as I thought it would be.

Sunday I reknit the heel. But I had somehow put the wrong stitches onto the wrong needles, so now in addition to there being holes, the pattern from before the heel was all messed up because of the misaligned stitches. So I ripped again. You'd think I would have considered putting in a lifeline, but I didn't. Plus, that would have required finding a needle, and I didn't want to do that. I knit the heel once more. Still not right. The way it stands now, it's semi-acceptable. The one side of the heel is fine, perfect. The other has a small hole.

I am again trying the silent-and-forgotten treatment with the sock. I threw it aside, picked up the Wave Skirt, and continued work on that. Anything but that nasty, stupid sock. I then started reading the fifth Harry Potter book. Bad, mean sock... I also started swatching the new poncho from the old poncho disaster. ...Grr, grr, sock - I'm ignoring you until you become more agreeable!!

I feel like I'm on the brink of some huge knitting revelation. I am trying and trying and trying to figure out WHY the holes appear. I haven't figured it out yet, which is why the holes continue to be there. The plan is (I think), to tink back a couple rounds to the place where the hole is. Then...after I figure out how to rewrap the yarn from the short rows...I WILL make there be no holes.

All the other knitters out there who got offended when I wrote before that short rows were easy...I'm sorry! I don't have the faintest idea how I managed to get my first one to work, but obviously it wasn't because I'm super skilled at it. I'm ready for any suggestions...!!