oops

I don't consider myself a sock knitter. But I knit a lot of socks. I think this is because I like to wear hand-knitted socks and the only person in my life making them for me is, um me.

I also tend to make a lot of plain socks in fun sock yarns. In a way this is because I tend to buy fun sock yarns. Really, I know of few other projects that I would use a lot that take only one or two skeins (I actually have three one skein project books in hopes that someday I might use up all the other one skein things I have bought over the years). So I tend to buy a lot of sock yarn.

I've recently become quite taken with toe up socks. Nothing fancy, just double pointed needs, one at a time, with a heel done the way Ann Budd told me too in Interweave knits (the one issue that is very much used at my house). I think I've knit well I've lost count, I'm sure ravelry would tell me, but lets say more than 6 pairs of socks from this pattern. And always I dutifully follow the directions and designate which stitches are for the heel and which are the instep. Until now.

I've been working on this pair of socks since November. I've stopped along the way and made Christmas gifts and panda sweaters and bee sweaters and olympic projects, but I've always had these socks going. And Wednesday night I finished them. I prepared to wear them to work on Thursday. There's a smart knitter out there who knows where this is headed.



Yep, somehow I managed to knit one of them crooked. So when I put the sock on my heel the toe goes across my foot instead of across my toes. That morning I was convinced I had to rip the entire thing out and start over. Thankfully I had to go to work. After I had woken up a bit--ok after lunch--I remembered that I only had to rip out to just past the heel--I only had to re-work half the sock! I is smart.

Olympics

So, the knitting olympics. Well, when I picked my project and decided I'd participate, I was just getting over a really bad cold. I figured I'd finish the bee sweater, make the repairs on the panda sweater and still have time for the project (pretty thing by the Yarn harlot). In fact I remember thinking, and if I finish this early I'll attempt to finish these socks I started.

Pardon me while I laugh.

First, let me say that I had what might be called an unforeseen injury. Two days after the olympics began, I broke out in the worst case of hives I have ever had. EVER. I itched, I swelled, I hurt. The culprit turned out to be one of the antibiotics I had taken for my secondary infection (brought on by the cold).
I lost 4 days to those hives.

At any rate, I soldiered on. I made an error that set me back a day. I made several more that set me back several hours. I thought about trying cheese since it seemed to work for Lindsey Vonn.

In the end, the closing ceremonies were on my birthday (and my daughters') and though I was a mere 7 rows from the end, I opted instead to talk with my mom and brother on the phone, eat dinner with my family AND have ice cream afterwards.
It was a tactical decision and made it so I did not finish until about 11am this morning. And that's only if you don't count blocking.

I bought a special 16 inch us 3 addi turbo circular for this project and used Buckingham which is a alpaca silk blend. I only used half the skein, but I think it might be cutting close to attempt another out of it. Maybe if I cut it down a few rows. At any rate, I had what Bob Costas might call the "agony of defeat" when after binding it off, it barely went over my head. But barely is the word and it went.