Wednesday, February 15, 2006

What the sock?

Am I socking retarded? I cannot seem to knit a decent sock to save my soul. At first, I thought it was just the pattern, which took the blame for the much-maligned Ugly Sock. But the pattern looked nice on this one. Yet somehow I knit and wind up with this pile of sock. The foot is like sticking my foot in a wool balloon. It's not that it's just too long. It's slightly too long, despite the fact that I decreased exactly 2" short of the end of my foot like it told me to. It's also miles too wide. One of the variations on the pattern called for ribbing all the way down the top, which is clearly what I should have done. The top of the foot seems to be too wide by exactly the amount that much ribbing would pull in. But the pattern doesn't say to keep ribbing! It doesn't even tell you to decrease if you don't want ribbing. My gauge is fine (yes, I even double-checked it). This is not even something extreme blocking could save. I even thought, well, it will be inside the shoe so it won't matter.....
No. There's too much sock to fit inside the shoe. After several minutes of fiddling I can mush all the extra material into the shoe so it's very uncomfortable, then the cuff looks okay. But if that's what I'm going for I might as well just knit myself ankle warmers with toe straps and slap those on.

So now I have a dilemma. Do I:

A. Rip out this entire thing and try to figure out what the sock is wrong?

B. Knit the other piece of sock to match and give them away/hide them forever?

C. Knit the other sock in a different way and see if it comes out better, redoing the first sock if it works and turning both into cat toys if it doesn't work?

D. Give up on this whole socking thing altogether?

Your comments/magical solutions are greatly appreciated.

4 comments:

e's knitting and spinning blog said...

Don't give up! I would either knit another one and give it to someone with fatter feet than you(they will be so surprised that you took all that time to knit them socks!)or rip and try a different pattern. What size needles with how many stitches?

Kristine said...

I'm still thinking that the yarn needed a smaller needle size... but you could prove me wrong if you count gauge.

Anonymous said...

That's a tough call... I would be soooo tempted to just rip it out and find a different pattern. But that would sort of like be giving up, wouldn't it? Then again, my track record with sock knitting isn't all that great... so maybe you shouldn't take advice from me. ;)

Kristine said...

hmm... I vote for knitting the 2nd sock with smaller needles (just after the ribbing)or a modified pattern, and then if it works, ripping out the other sock to the ribbing.