99 Problems...

Toe with well-hidden yarn end

...mostly socks. I was going to photograph and post my two most recent socks, but realized that in my excitement to finish, I had started the toe too early on one pair. To make matters worse, I am having difficulty finding the woven in end to un-pick the toe, rip it back, and add the 5-ish rows on one sock and 2 - 3 rows on the other. They technically fit, needing less than 1/2" of adjustment, but if I'm going to spend the time making my own socks, I may as well take the time to be sure they fit!

More toes to rip back

I figured that since I was going to be ripping back some toes to fix sock length problems, I should probably fix my Cusp as well. These were a test knit and in my haste, I apparently stopped about 1/2" too short on the foot, making the second one to perfectly match the first. Logically, taking my time to be sure the project is perfect is one of the great things about knitting. Emotionally, sometimes you just want to be done with the project, and that apparently happens around 6 rows before I should start the toe, at least if I'm making socks for me!

A couple of years ago, I made Absinthe, gorgeous socks out of a gorgeous (hand-wash only) yarn. These socks and I had some problems, the major problem being it's toe-up and I have a large instep, something that just doesn't work well for typical as-written socks.

Evil nail damage

It's easily fixed through extending heel flaps, something that isn't often a part of toe-up socks, and isn't part of Absinthe (it has a "fake" heel flap, looking like a top-down heel flap without offering the ability to customize). I had to rip back, recalculate, and re-do that sock to make it the luscious, well-fitting, amazing sock it is today. I don't wear them often due to the handwash-only nature of the sock. You can probably see where this is going. While wearing these socks, I found a nail that decided it no longer wanted to hold down the floorboards. Instead, it wanted to make a hole in my sock, my precious, precious sock!

See how the gusset squishes the flap?

Finally, I made the same mistake on my tall socks as on my toe socks. I followed the pattern to make a stockinette heel and because I always ignore the directions on how many stitches to pick up along the heel flap and just pick up one per slipped stitch and one in the corner, I did just that. For a plain stockinette heel flap, the size is different and that stitch ratio just doesn't work. With the toe socks, I really couldn't rip back without completely messing up the sock given the cutting and matching I did with the toe colors. With this one, I luckily can rip back to the heel flap and re-do the foot before moving on to the second sock. It is the next sock up on the needles, but the first one took quite some time so don't expect a finished object post anytime soon!