The Hole Truth

I don't know wtf I did this time. I was blissfully knitting along, mostly knitting by feel that second Mountain Colors flathead cherry sock while I watched Clinton and Stacy shred the ego of yet another unsuspecting fashion victim. There's a WNTW marathon today and I'm in a deeply snarky mood. You know what that means? Voila! Instant multitasking! I can slack off for the afternoon in two different ways at once!

Am I good or what.




















Yep. Or what. Because today, knitting by touch equals a big honkin hole in my sock leg. Do you see that? Front and center? That dark loop sticking out is a dropped stitch. Just above it is a nice large hole.

Here's a little mystery. I still have the right number of stitches on the needles. So not only did I manage to drop a stitch, but I also managed to somewhere, somehow, some time add a stitch.

My guess is that I slid the needle between stitches instead of into the stitch. I created a yarn over instead of a stitch, and then dropped the old, still live stitch.
And for an added bonus, I also managed to knit an inch past the dropped stitch before noticing it. Am I good or what? Or what.

Clearly I need to pay more attention to my knitting and less to Clinton and Stacy. Or maybe the knitting goddess is punishing me for knitting when I should be working. Or maybe it was some subliminal freudian thing, me putting a hole in my knitting while Stacy ripped some poor chanteuse for wearing an argyle sweater with holes in it. I felt bad for that little jazz diva. I mean, we all have that beloved comfy sweater we hold onto past its prime, right?

















And sometimes holes in the knitting are a good thing. The turquoise Dale Baby Ull on the right is a zigzaggy lace rib from Charlene Schurch. Very easy pattern. Every other round is regular k2, p2 resting round. Then on alternating pattern rounds, you either yo-k2tog or you ssk-yo on the knit columns, and purl the purls as usual. I've been playing with this pattern as I knit it, alternating the way I wrap the yarn, knitting and purling through the back loops, and basically just messing with it to see what kind of effects I can create. The only difference I see so far is in the size of the holes from the yarn overs. The pattern itself remains intact. That makes sense, but I still have this urge to mess with this as I'm knitting it.

The Baby Ull is knitting into super squooshy, super sproingy fabric, making it the exact opposite of the jaywalker. I turned the heel on the jaywalker and have knit about half an inch of the gusset. For now, I'm sticking to the chevron pattern, but that won't last much longer. The fabric is wickedly inflexible and a regular stockinette would be so much more comfortable on the feet. So I'm thinking I will decrease partway through the gussets in pattern and then switch to regular stockinette when the stitch count seems low enough to make the right size foot tube.

That's the sock report.

In other news, I must sent out a hearty Oh Crap! My Bad! to my SnB crew. I forgot about our alternate meeting last night. And next week I will be in Dallas for that conference, so it will be two weeks before I get to ogle all of your knitting again. ...pout... But hey, maybe by then there will be a finished snake cozy to admire, eh Missus A?