Thanks to the fact that I have been feeling quite well both physically and mentally for the last few weeks, I have begun engaging in activities that are supposed to be fun and bring me enjoyment. You know, like knitting.
Knitting socks is clearly an activity created by the Devil to drive people insane.
I’ve started about a hundred pairs of socks and have yet to finish even the cuff of a single one. I was actually doing pretty well on one, which was going to be a pair of baby socks for a friend who’s baby was born last summer — missed that deadline. However, I made the mistake of putting it down for a while and coming back to it and when I restarted I could never get my new work to match up with the old ribbing work. I mean, I was still doing K2 P2 and in the same places but it didn’t look the same and it didn’t even look inside out. It just looked garbled.
So, I’ve put that aside for now. I’ve cast on a pair of #3 bamboo circular needles to start on the basic woman’s medium sock at the beginning of Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles by Cat Bordhi. I’ve only done one row so far. It’s taken me about 8 hours to get that far because I’ve started, pulled it out and restarted about 5 or six times already. At least once I thought the stitches were way too tight. Once nothing looked right. The rest of the time, my counting has gotten really screwed up in such a way that I just didn’t know how to fix it — in fact, once the join came undone two rows in and I have no idea how that happened but the count was also off.
(And as a side note, I’ve discovered that the new dose of Wellbutrin has given me hand tremors that makes doing detailed work and stitch counting extremely difficult. The doctor says that 80% of the time it goes away in 2 weeks, and that’s what I’m hoping for because I finally feel a great improvement in my mood and energy.)
O.K. so I’ve got the new yarn on the bamboo needles; I’m attempting an adult sock. I think my problem has been an inconsistency in where I’m holding the needles when I’m working the stitches. None of the books on knitting, including the one that teaches all the different stitches and methods, talks about right side and wrong side or “knitting inside out”. However, I noticed at the bottom of this tutorial for knitting socks on circular needles, there’s a mention about holding “your needles so the working stitches are closest to you and the stitches-in-waiting are in the background. Work as usual, knitting stitches off the left needle onto the right needle.” This caused me to put some thought into my knitting last night. I got very confused when I got to the end of the first row on the first needle, because of course, the next stitch would be knitting stitches off the right needle onto the left. It only occurred to me a few minutes ago that you have to flip the whole thing about 180° to smoothly get the needles in the correct position.
I somehow suspect that this whole sock thing is a lot easier than it’s working out to be. I feel very frustrated because I know I’m an intelligent person. I write code that makes computers do the impossible, but the concept of knitting a sock is eluding me.
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