Sunday, May 17, 2009

building a better toe-up sock

I am on a mission to build a better sock. To be specific, a better toe-up sock. I am using Wisdom Yarns Poem sock yarn in rainbow (because everything is better in technicolor). 

My first pattern was the standard free toe-up recipe we hand out at Sister Arts by Southwest Trading Company. I knit all the way up the toe, foot, turned the heel and was several inches up the leg before I admitted to myself that I was completely dissatisfied with the result. It has a fairly standard short row heel with no heel flap or gusset and is simply too tight over the arch of my foot. The heel is wholly insufficient and I refuse to accept such inadequacy from my time and effort. I was sitting on the couch, reluctant to frog so many hours (ok, really just a few days) of hard (ok, really simply mindless) work. My boyfriend shocked me by actually saying something that makes me absolutely positive that he thinks much too much like a knitter for someone who is actually not a knitter; "why don't you just put that sock on a holder, knit the second sock a different way, and then decide which to rip out?"

Stunned by such knitterly logic from a layman, how could I do anything else? Onto a holder went the first sock (heretofore referred to as "Sad Sock") and cast on for the next, new, improved, second sock (heretofore called "Angry Sock" mostly because "Emelia is really quite bad at math and screws numbers up real good, resulting in a total cat-yack excuse for a Sock" is very long). 

Stay tuned for the adventures of Angry Sock.