Tally so far is 4 completed child/adult hats and 3 preemie hats. Preemie hat #4 is nearly done, as is adult hat #5. However, a quick check of the calendar revealed a rather shocking fact . . .
Hubby's birthday is this week!
So hat knitting is moved to the back burner while I continue the annual tradition of making Hubby a new pair of hand-knit wool socks for his birthday. I had started a pair of socks for him back in November. It was a rather disappointing start because the self-striping yarn did not seem to have any repeats. I had carefully wound the skein into two equal weight balls, as is my usual custom. I pulled yards and yards out of each center-pull ball, trying to get the yarn patterns to align. No matter how much yarn I pulled, nothing lined up. So I gave up and just started knitting from the beginning of both balls.
Fast forward 5 inches of knitting and all of a sudden, the patterns did have a repeat. The problem was, the matching stripes were 3 inches apart. Knowing my Hubby's disposition (perfectionist, symmetry-loving, engineering-type person), I knew he'd never actually wear the socks unless I fixed them. So the socks were set aside while I pondered the manner of their redemption.
Fast forward again to this morning. Knowing I only have a few days to finish these, I decided to be bold and cut off the toe section of one of the socks, unravel the sock up to the point where the toe shaping started on the other sock and re-knit the toe down. Two hours of surgery and reconstructions and you see the results above. Also, since the surgery left the sock 3 inches shorter than the other, I've spent the rest of the morning knitting it to the same length as the original sock.
Granted, I might have unraveled the offending sock completely and restarted it but by choosing the above method, I was able to get the stripes to match perfectly. Whether I save a significant amount of time by doing it this way is open to debate. I did have at least 1.5 inches of knitting that was saved, that would have had to be re-knit had I started from scratch.
Needless to say, I'm pleased with the results of this morning's attempt. Not only did I salvage a pair of socks that might have languished in the bottom of Hubby's sock drawer but I figured out that it is not all that difficult to re-knit toes. Should socks pop a hole in the toes, I know I can save them by knitting new toes. Sweet!
Now if I could figure out how to re-knit holey heels. Hmmmm?
3 comments:
There have been no socks in progress here for many months, but suddenly Leah and I are both knitting socks. Good job on matching those stripes!
Fantastic job!!!!!
Yeah, we're all about the matchy-matchy here...
Eeek - the cutting part just freezes me! Good luck with the matching . . .
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