How To
That Basic Sock Tip I Forgot
I write this with humility in my heart and the hope that somewhere, somehow, these words will be of help to other folk who are in the midst of a charming, adorable, straightforward pattern like Antirrhinum Socks.
In the MDK Shop
To be clear: this really and truly is a charming, adorable, straightforward pattern. It is beautifully written, as clear as a shopping list for how to make these beautiful socks. Rachel Coopey is famous for her socks. These Antirrhinum Socks are absolutely worthy of that admiration.
The problem is not the pattern. The problem is me.
It’s the eyelets.
I just can’t seem to get my act together on the yarnover/knit 2 togethers that occur at very regular intervals. I’m screwing this up all sorts of ways: I fail to yarnover (meaning no eyelet is created), or I inadvertently double the yarnover (making the holes twice as big), or the eyelets spontaneously come out mingy and small.
For everyone who craves these Antirrhinum Socks, here are my tips on avoiding the gruesome fate of eyelets gone wild:
- Pay attention.
- When you’re going from a yarnover to a purl stitch, the yarn needs to do basically an enhanced yarnover. Because the yarn needs to end up at the front of the work after completing the yarnover, ready for a purl stitch, there’s extra yarnovering required to get it to the front. This is where my over-exuberant yarnovering ended up with double yarnovers. Bottom line: pay attention.
- Sometimes the eyelets are yarnover/knit 2 together. Sometimes they’re knit 2 together/yarnover. This is not SpaceX engineering. There’s an easy pattern here. But it’s the sort of thing where you should, you know: pay attention.
- The five rounds of plain knit stitches between the yarnover rounds give one the opportunity to catch one’s breath and reclaim some dignity about the whole thing. However, if you’re not careful, you’ll blast past the five rounds and have to rip back all the extra rounds of Relief Knitting you have done. In other words: pay attention.
- Take a moment to evaluate your desire for perfection. For me, my desire for perfection is outweighed by my desire to finish these socks. I love them. I want them. I do not need them to be perfect. In other words: pay no attention. Just keep knitting.
I did manage to turn the heel without accidentally making a sleeve or otherwise gumming it all up. I’m about to rejoin the pink for my next bout of eyelet-making. Working up the fortitude for this.
Ahhhh, I hear you! I have done the same, forgetting some yo’ s and I do have a 6 row between two rows of eyelets! Will find somewhere quiet for sock two.
We may just go totally freestyle on Sock No. 2. No telling what may happen . . .
Ann, your feet will be so happy.
Exactly what I do: make mistakes and very often, decide to accept them. Love these!
In knitting AND in life, by the way!
I might just have a line with only a single round of yarnovers, rather than having the paired round where the yarnovers are the other way round, iyswim… I was having too much fun at the campfire and stopped paying attention!
I have no problem ripping back a project, although it does sometimes mean a hiatus for the WIP involved – right now I’m looking at a sock that has already had two toes and is catching it’s breath before having a third. But sometimes I think, well, if I don’t go back and reknit this correctly, these socks will have to be For Me…and if that thought produces a spontaneous grin, I know it’s the Right Thing To Do. Hence my pretty teal and purple socks with a bizarre seam in random sections on the back of the leg. So pretty from the front! 😉
If we just keep moving . . . everything looks great.
Eyelets gone wild are still pretty.
“yarnovering” – a new verb
It’s kind of like jump roping.
Thank you for this. Your words “I just can’t seem to get my act together on the yarnover/knit 2 togethers that occur at very regular intervals,” spoke to my very soul. I am doing an even simpler lace pattern for a snood, and yet I still manage to mess it up, even with the help of stitch markers and a written check-off system. I finally brought it–with the correct stitch count, but markers in the wrong places– to Knit Night last week, hoping the general good juju of experienced lace knitters would help me. It did, as did their kind words of comfort about how often they mess up simple lace patterns themselves. But I’m still wary, and haven’t returned to it since,. I will now, keeping in mind that I must “pay attention!”
Right there with you. After 10 years of sock knitting, I looked down at my sock and saw I had stacked my circles again. The circles in Circle Socks are staggered, not stacked. I had to rip out 10 rounds. This is the fourth time I’ve knit the pattern. Maybe it was the distraction of watching Bogart and Bacall in To Have and Have Not but maybe not. I made the same mistake last week.
OH! Bogart and Bacall–such favorites. I believe that Season 3 of Broadchurch may be affecting my eyelet skills. David Tennant and Olivia Colman are terrific.
Hahaha . . . SO understand this problem, LADD = lace attn deficit disorder. Sometimes Knitalin works, but almost never does KIP (knitting in public)!
So are you saying we should pay attention?
Wait, what?
After 8 solid years of knitting (LOTS of knitting), this summer is the Summer of My First Sweater. Other knitters dive into sweaters, and I’ve been mucking around with scarves, hats, mittens, socks – basically every possible thing to avoid sweaters. The reason is that I struggle so much with gauge. Even though I feel tight stitches as I go along, my gauge is always loose. As in, ‘I knit on 2’s when patterns recommend 7’s’ loose. It makes no sense, but I love my other small projects, and I haven’t wanted to work up a sweater on 2’s. This year though – I knew I had to Do A Sweater. I picked a straightforward, top-down Isabel Kramer pattern. I got my gauge – hooray! On 2’s again, but what the heck, it’s not a speed race. It’s almost all StSt, so easy-peasy, and I get to try it on as I go along. I’m halfway through, and realized that for unknown reasons, my stitch count is not matching the pattern. Whaaa…? How/where/why did I mess up the stitch count?? But – I keep trying it on and it’s still basically fitting the way I want it to. So – I am letting go of my perfectionistic tendencies and plodding on, and hope to have it to wear this fall! Sometimes, you gotta just keep knitting.
If you’re knitting on 2s for the same gauge others get on 7s, you aren’t actually doing any additional knitting! And smaller needles aren’t any more difficult to knit on than larger. Personally, I’d rather knit a complicated fine laceweight lace shawl on 1-2s than a plain worsted/bulky one on 8-9s! For me, smaller needles actually are more comfortable.
To each her own.
I hear you! For some unknown reason, I decided to do a pair of socks toe up (which I don’t do very frequently) on a magic loop (when I mostly use, and love, DPNs) 2 at a time (which I’ve never done before) in a pattern I’ve never done before (and it’s reversed / mirrored on the second sock) with a completely new-to-me type of heel (Cat’s Sweet Tomato Heel)! So I Pay Attention when I go to pick them up. It’s going kind of slowly, but I’m almost up to the instep and haven’t yet had to go back more than a few stitches to correct things. Keeping my mental fingers crossed – I start the heels today!
I’m ending up just dumping the yarnover part and knitting a nice p1k2 pattern instead! I frogged and started afresh.
Could be worse. A dear friend recently turned a heel on a sock, worked a few more inches and turned a second heel on the same sock!