When Good Socks Go Bad

Well, I just found out accidentally how to delete a photo from a post-in-process, and how to get it back.



What you are seeing is a sock that is [mockingly] one inch too long for my foot, and an exploding ball of yarn. Just off-camera at the top is Sock the Second in its larval stage and definitely not ready for prime time.

This afternoon I took a big glug of hot chicken broth for courage and frogged Sock the First back to where I should have stopped for the heel turning. It is now resting patiently, next to a huge mass of frogged yarn which is connected to the mess that has leapt off the main ball.

Lesson learned: plan to start the first sock from the *inside* of the ball, but first wind a second ball from the outside of the ball, and leave them connected, and start the second sock from the inside of the second ball. I don't know if this actually works, but it sounds good inside my head, as unfortunately do lots of things that don't work out so well in actual execution.

If I work both socks at the same time, from different halves of the yarn, they should come out the same width and the same length, and I won't have to buy one of those really cool electronic scales to tell me "this sock weighs X ounces and you have X-.02 ounces left on the ball for the second sock". And when I meet in the middle and have run out of yarn, the socks are officially done. Right?

But in the meantime I have half a sock on one set of needles, and a big fluff of kinked yarn, and a falling-apart ball of virgin wool, and another pregnant Gods-eye on the second set of DPs. As I posted in a comment on my knitting friend Elizabeth's blog, "Nothing exactly transportable; more a project for knitting in bed with feet propped up and bagpipes wailing in the background."

I wonder what the neighbors would think if I drifted off to sleep to "Scotland the Brave"?