I am working on some new socks now. This is a pattern I am creating for a friend from Ravelry. I wanted something special, so I decided instead of making socks for her from someone else's pattern, I;d design my own pattern. I have done that before, and the other patterns are ok, but not too complicated. This is a lace pattern, with traveling stitches and (hopefully, IF I can get the count on them right) some cables as well. All the things I've learned about knitting socks in the last year are going into this one pair of socks. Nothing like jumping into the deep end.
The only thing I have NOT mastered thus far in my sock knitting career, is learning how to count and figure the number of stitches I need to cast on to do the number of repeats around the sock that I want. But this is not a new problem - I have had problems with math my entire life, so why should it be any different for sock knitting? I cast on and tried to recreate the pattern in my head in yarn, and realized about halfway thru the first row that I didn't have the right number of stitches AND that it wasn't doing what I wanted it to do. So I ripped it all out and went to graph paper and wrote down what I thought I wanted to do. Then, I cast on some stitches (more than I needed, but that was intentional) so that I could try a swatch of the pattern to see if I had the ideas right on paper at least. They weren't, but I did figure out hos to make it look like it did in my head, so I stopped the test swatch and cast on again for the real thing. I THOUGHT I had figured that I needed 72 stitches per row, so I cast on that many, and started off with my improvised cuff that would flow (supposedly) right into the pattern. I got thru the first row, but had screwed up my count somewhere and was off on the stitches (I thought), so decided to plod ahead and tink back a row when I found my error. I went a long, and sure enough, there was a goof where I forgot to change from knit to purl, and I thought I was going to be ok... until I got to the end of that row and had 8 stitches too many. I then spent about half an hour, counting thru the stitches I had done, and trying to figure out where I had screwed up, until it finally dawned on me that I should have only cast on 64 stitches! FROG POND!!!!
I FINALLY got it cast on correctly and got thru the cuff and into the pattern. I am about halfway thru the first repeat, and I must say, it is looking very nice. My hands are a bit sore not, but I am satisfied with how it's going, so I'm happy. And more importantly, I think Denise will be happy with the socks when they are done.
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