AHHHHHHHH! Socks

I've had the fodder for this post since, oh I posted last. I just haven't sat down to write the stupid thing.

Hourglass socks. These are the most fiddly pattern I've ever knit, because of all of the purling and twisted cabling. I started these in November, to have socks to knit on during my walk to work. It got cold and the twisted cabling turned out to not be a good knit to work on when not fully paying attention to it. These socks have taken a lot of time and concentration.

I made a bunch of modifications, because by now I know what I like in a good fitting sock. I like a 6" cuff with a longer heel, so my sock legs are about 8.5" from top of cuff to bottom of heel. I like about 1" of cuff, depending on the design, and I love it when the different aspects of a design can flow into each other, like the leg to foot row of twisted stitches along the edge. As such, I changed the cuff to a cast on of 70 sts instead of 68 so I didn't have to increase later, and did a 1x1 twisted rib cuff, so that the twisted ribbing can flow into the twisted cables in the pattern. I kept the heel flap over 35 sts instead of decreasing to 34, and went back to a total of 70 sts down the foot.

I printed out a copy of the pattern to have in my purse, with all of my changes and taking out some unnecessary (for me) explanation to shorten the printout length. At least, I thought I put all the changes onto the printout...


All but the length of the heel flap, that is! For the first sock, I did it right. The second sock, however, was knit as per instructions. I thought it was a fairly short heel flap, but figured that since that was on the page, that was what it was supposed to be, instead of double checking it against the other sock or the numbers on Hedera, which is what I use for my heel flaps. When I finished the gusset decreases, I thought, "My, that took no time at all. Either that's wrong or I got a heck of a lot faster at this. Must have just been faster!"

That's two major warning bells, and not once until I had finished weaving in the end after Kitchenering did I check it against the first sock. I am still in shock over what I found and have not yet had the heart to rip it out back to the heel flap and re-knit it all. I do really, really want more work socks, so I'll have to get around to it sooner rather than later, but damn, to think I was finally, really, truly done with such a project and then to find out that no, I have to rip out all that hard work and re-do it...AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!