The Friday File

I wish I had more knitting to show for a peaceful day off. I knit a little, read as much as I could cope with and then spent some time snoozing in the sun. It was great.

I stopped by the library on Tuesday and found a copy of Meg Swansen's Knitting on the shelf. Wow. Just Wow. When I grow up...

And I also found a copy of Richard Rutt's History of Hand Knitting. The scope of this work is breathtaking. The detailed analysis of the early work is amazing. I love this kind of History.

I'm pondering the knitting I did do yesterday. I worked on the red socks. I'm at the interesting part (the heel) and I suspect that I will be pulling it out again. See up till now, when I knit socks with a gusset, I don't do the plain knit row between the decrease (or increase round as the case may be). It still works out and I don't have to think about anything. As Cat Bordhi found, as long as it is within that particular area of the sock construction, it works.

Not so with this heel. I've been struggling with this heel for a while. I like knitting it better than other short row heels, but the fit hasn't been right. There always was too much fabric at the ankle, even though my stitch count was right. After ripping and redoing and ripping a second time, and redoing, I think I get it.

This is the one heel where those knit rounds between the increase rounds matter. A lot. If you don't have those plain rounds between the knit rounds, you finish the heel work too soon, and the entire ankle area is out of kilter.
When I try on these socks, the completely decreased gusset stitches are still below my ankle. To get to the nice upright cuff of the sock, what I am doing is, in effect, knitting those rounds I skipped. You can see the difference best if you look at my photo and see the height of the completed gusset and then go over to Wendy Knits and check out this link. See where her gussets finish? Yup. The lazy hazy way I've been doing it means that there are a lot of rows bunching up on the top of my ankle before everything reaches the leg.

I'll be ripping back and redoing again. My consolation is the the slip stitch bottoms. Doesn't that look nice? I've done just what one of the knitting group lady said, and started making a v of slipped stitches in the middle of the arch of the foot, and added a pair on each side after 8 rows. Or 6 rows, till all the bottom of the foot stitches are part of the slip stitch pattern. A most elegant little bit, that will take the punishment the bottom of socks need to take.

One good part, one redo. That is just about right for a Friday in the middle of some days off.