Party Pooper

I truly had intended to have posted when I finished the Jaywalker socks. Things did not go as planned but that was totally my fault. I got a little too big for my britches. I looked at the directions and wanted to shift the stitches and when I did that, it created a big problem. I tried and tried to fix it by subtracting stitches and it flat did not work. So I decided instead of driving myself and my knitting friends more nuts than I already had, I would do two simple adjustments. I usually knit the gusset stitches down to 6 to fit my foot. I went down to 4 in hopes to tighten up the foot of the sock. Shifting the pattern on the foot caused me to have 42 stitches instead of a nice snug 36. I decided I would just do the foot in stockinette and let it go. So if the sock looks different than what you thought it should, it is. I know when I am licked and it was totally my fault.

The lesson I learned was that a designer puts things where they look best; for the most part. In this case that was true. I was messing around with a perfectly good pattern. I should have knit one pair and then made adjustments on a second pair so that I would know what I was about to deal with. I thought I was more experienced than what I was. It certainly put a new light on things for me. I need to keep trying new socks and mistakes are steps toward knowledge on how to make a sock of most any kind fit my foot perfectly. I do love making socks and think that I am getting better but I still have a long way to go.

I did confirm some things I know about my own foot. The heel was too tall and had too many stitches across (42). 36 stitches seem to work best for the width across the heel for me and about 36 rows total for the height. I know that the gusset stitches in most of the socks I have done so far need to be whittled down to six. I know that I pretty much need someplace between 60-65 rows from the gusset to the toe decrease. I have a short foot.

As you can see from these two photos, the sock pools around the top of the heels (which means there are too many stitches for me).

Even though the sock pools around the ankle and the heel is just too large for me, I like the socks. They turned out well considering I tried to wreck and perfectly good pattern! lol! I will wear the socks this winter to see how they wear since they seem a wee bit larger than what I think they should be. It was a good lesson that confirmed the fact that I know my own foot and that I am beginning to look at a pattern differently than I did 5/6 years ago. No pattern is engraved in stone.