I Am Suna, Hear Me Groan

Wow, my knitting luck is not good lately. What you see pictured it my first try at doing something fun with this pair of socks. I decided to do the gusset in the center rather than on the edges.

It looks OK here, but when I put it on, there was an absolutely atrocious ladder in the center. I'd done SSK, K2tog in the center, and the transitions didn't look nice.

So, I frogged the sock back to the heel and tried again. This time, I did a slip two together as if to knit, knit one, pass two slipped stitches over center decrease. That made a really cool looking vortex of converging ribs (in fact, I named the socks Converging Rib Socks) that didn't quite meet. I hope they look like arrows pointing inward or something. The curve on the edge was very pretty. I felt good. That is, I felt good until I tried the socks on. They were, um, more of tourniquets than socks. Tight as a blood pressure cuff. I was confused. How come socks are just fine when you decrease two stitches every other row (sorta) when making a heel gusset, but doing the same amount of decreasing in the center didn't work? What gives, I wondered.

Then a little voice played a tape in my head, which is what happens when I remember something I read. It told me, "Cat Bordhi says to decrease every third row on all her cool socks." Oh, um, yes, she does, doesn't she? I am thinking that perhaps she has a reason for that. Like trial and error showed her it gets too tight otherwise.


So, sighing deeply , perhaps even groaning, I ripped the socks back AGAIN (which also caused Pat at the LYS to gasp). This time I did the centered double decreases every third row. The curve was more gradual but you could see it happening. And when I got to 32 stitches, I tried on the socks. Yay, they went on my foot! They are still a bit on the snug side, but not bad. Whew. Now, by the time that I hit 32 stitches, I had not gotten rid of all the ribs, so I continued to decrease, but at the edge of the last P2 on each side, I'd do a lifted increase, to keep the same number of stitches on the needles. It looked pretty. I'd already experimented on which stitch to do the increase on (doing it on the purl made a hole), so I knew this would look OK.

Here's a picture of how it looks on my foot. I hope you can see the decreases. Tomorrow or the next day I hope to show you a completed sock in my weird little new pattern. I'll have to get someone to take a "front of foot" shot. I must say, all this thinking is probably not worth it, but I felt like trying something new, and that does usually take a few tries. This is not as depressing as knitting a simple cardigan back and having it end up 2" too small. That still makes me feel pretty dim.

I'll re-start Bridget this week, though. Not to worry. I won't give up like I seem to have done on my purple crocheted cardigan. The photo below is a side view. I realize you can't see the ribs at all, but it is interesting, I hope, to see that there's no gusset, but the sock decreases to where the foot fits fine!