Stella's Many Winding Roads

Fleegle’s Socks Revisited, and other musings November 7, 2011

I’m working on another pair of Wool-ease socks using Fleegle’s Toe-up Two at Time on Two Circulars
I’m at the gusset, and like this method for its ease and simplicity.

When I get to the heel turning part, there is an ingenious method that prevents that hole that always happens when you join the heel to the foot. The directions in the pattern explain it perfectly!

This pattern is so simple and mindless that I often find myself in random thoughts, usually of my kids and DH. Since both consume much of my conscious thoughts of the day, my blogs suffer neglect as a result. Today was one of those days.

So, I’m knitting along, and I come to a spot where I’m joining my front and back, and there is this loop that got caught after the last stitch and is hanging there between my cables, like a lost stitch. Actually, it’s not a stitch and needs to be worked in when I get to that point, or it will turn into a ladder rung. You know what I’m talking about: that joint at the side of a sock where all the stitches stat to spread apart like a loose seam. It happens when the tension becomes too loose when jumping from one needle to the next.
So when you come to a place where you find you have inadvertently knit with the yarn having been looped over your cable when doing the jump, then when you come back to it in the next round, twist the last stitch of that row, continue to the next needle and then on the return trip around, twist the opposite stitch when coming to the juncture. That will pull up the slack in the join and won’t even be noticeable. Continue knitting rounds as before, one problem solved.

if you haven’t already done so, please see this post to avoid gusset holes.

Now, it might not make sense until you actually get to this next part, so bookmark the next page! and come back to it often. I printed up both pages when I started the socks so I wouldn’t have to keep looking up the links, saved me a ton of steps.

Fleeglesblog also shows you an increase that is so flawless in its simplicity, pure genius!

General Directions

The increase I use is called the Lifted Increase and goes something like this:

1. Insert your right hand needle from front to back into the top of the stitch below the next one to be knitted. Knit the stitch in the usual way.

2. Then, knit the next stitch on your left hand needle.

See http://www.knitting.co.nz/site/page_affix/toaffix_learntoknit6/ for pictures.

After I developed this method, I subsequently discovered a way to avoid gusset holes. Please see this post and follow the directions when you finish turning the heel.

Pure Genius!

I hope that my random musings have been a help to someone else like me, someone who does not follow any particular path, but gathers tidbits of others’ helpful suggestions that we can adapt at some point in our knitting adventures.

I’ll spare you the family drama that usually gets me to this point- I keep moving forward, burying my troubles, not littering my path with them like so many discarded soda cans. I stick to a less travelled road, one that has no Facebook billboards obscuring my view of a world seemingly filled with petty issues that others feel a need to broadcast. Maybe if those billboards came with a price tag , they’d be fewer. The price paid for freely advertising one’s bad day is sometimes realized too late, down the road.

I’m a Nomad; I travel light, keeping my path clean and simple. If our paths meet, stop and say Hi~ we can share a story or just our day and be on our way.