28
September
2006

Victim of Topology

A while back I made some socks for my sister. And I sent them to her and they turned out to be too big, too long in the foot. And when I was visiting in August, I made her try them on and I marked out how much smaller they had to be. And brought them back with me.

Tonight, I inserted some needles into the row where I wanted to rip back to and started unravelling the toe. But it was slow going. Because at every side decrease, I didn’t have loops that just pulled out, I had a strand actually threaded through loops. I couldn’t figure out what would do that. Then I got to the pattern section, and the problem got worse. Suddenly, I got the sinking feeling that maybe I had knit these socks toe up.

So, I checked my helpful project notes (referenced above) and sure enough, that’s what I did. Oh, how savvy I felt at the time. Modifying the pattern and working it out. And now, I’m just one big frustrated idiot with a sock I can’t even rip out properly.

Well, I have to see if I still have extra yarn around. Because all I need to do is rip back to where I’m holding stitches and knit a toe. And if I have extra yarn, and I can insert small needles into the stitches I want to work from, I can just join some yarn and knit the toe. In fact, I can just cut off the offending extra length of foot instead of trying to rip it out in an orderly fashion. But overall, this will take far more work than I had planned. Ack!

Posted by amy! under: Knitting

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4 comments

  1. lorinda:

    I think you’ve just proven that toe-up may be easier to knit but not easier to fix. Good luck!

  2. Stacey:

    Oh no! I almost knit a pair for my dad toe up, but then realized that if the foot was too long/short I would have no way of fixing it! Now, I only knit toe up for those feet I have easy access to!

  3. AnaBanana:

    I was thinking about knitting the next pair of socks toe up but you know you if I make any mistakes top down is easier to fix.

    Sometimes I’ve had the same problem because I’d forgotten where I started knitting.

    Happy Knitting,

  4. Gwen:

    An easier solution:
    1. Locate the line of stitches just above (toward the toe side) of the row you have sevured with a safety line or another needle.

    2. With scissors, carefully snip one edge stitch and then ‘un-knit’ the rest of the stitches across this row. (A little laborious, yes, but only for this single row) This will seperate the toe from the foot of the sock.(You now can ravel out this yarn and use this for re-knitting)

    3. With fingertips (or tweezers if necessary)
    remove the cut and ragged ends of this row of stitches to leave just the fresh active stitches on the needle.

    4. Now knit the rest of the sock, going in the direction from foot-to-toe, using the correct measurements.



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