Little Knitter on the Prairie

The weekend has come and gone. The kick-off to the wedding season was busy but not as overwhelming as I had worried. I can feel the slow progression from slow to busy but so far so good. I'm perhaps even a bit ahead of schedule (which is surely just asking for a monumental crisis that will bring everything to a grinding halt). Never mind, not ahead of schedule at all!

I would post pictures of the two-at-a-time socks but frankly I'm starting to become afraid of them. It's as though the yarn has become self-aware and does not want to be knit into socks. It clearly has a different idea of what item it should be knit into. Despite my intense care and meticulouslessness (ok, that's not really a word at all I'm just trying to show just how d@%! careful I'm being with them) things keep getting screwed up. Not just a little screwed up. Seriously screwed up.

I had made it past the heels and was cruising along in lovely stockinette. I stopped and checked them every single time I came to the separating point and pulled the two socks apart to make sure I hadn't accidentally connected them and make sure I had the correct yarn. I thought things were going well. Until I noticed a little hole. Huh? A hole? Oh yes. A hole. Wait. Two holes. Two holes a good two inches down from where I was. $*#@!!!! I immediately put the socks back into the project bag, zipped it shut and put it back in the knitting basket. Then I had a cocktail and tried to block it out of my mind for two days.

I tried to figure out if I could drop down and fix it but it appeared to be accidental yarn overs. After searching the Internet I didn't find any solution that looked like it would work for me. Perhaps there is one. At this point I don't think I want to know about it. I spent an obscene amount of time to tear back to those rotten stitches to fix it. Two nights ago I finally, FINALLY, got back to that last stitch and fixed it. I then proceeded (carefully!!) to start re-knitting it. Again. This is now the third time I have knit this section of the socks. I am now being super careful to watch how I'm knitting and make sure I'm not accidentally knitting between stitches, doing yarn overs or any other manner of stupid mistakes. I'm compulsively checking the socks to make sure they haven't been knit together, counting my stitches and making sure I'm always knitting with the correct yarn for each sock.

Despite this sock knitting neurosis I managed to drop a stitch last night. These ridiculous size 1 needle stockinette stitches are so freaking tiny I had to buy a new crochet hook today so I can fix them. This problem I can thankfully just drop down and fix without having to tear two socks back by two inches. It is still a little demoralizing. Ok, a lot demoralizing.

I know this two-at-a-time business is suppose to be more efficient and seem faster, I am clearly not there yet. I should probably just have kept going and figured no one would see the holes, but they bothered me too much and I knew it would bother me every time I saw them. The next pair of two-at-a-time socks I'll try on double-points and see if that method is a little easier for me. I don't really think these are hard to do, I just keep messing them up with dumb mistakes. And I don't want to start anything else until they're done. It's making me a bit grumpy.

I'm not sure what my problem is. Obviously this is all the fault of the yarn. It clearly would prefer to be something entirely different, perhaps wrist-warmers or knucks. Which is too bad. This is a battle of wills between the sock yarn and myself. I'm not giving up. They will become socks. I may have a Scarlett O'Hara moment in my front yard one evening vowing, "As God is my witness, this yarn will be knit into these two-at-a-time socks!" I will prevail. I will triumph!

Although I might start sleeping with my door locked. It's scary to think of what the yarn might be plotting for me at night while I'm sleeping...