I finished my Wanida socks over the weekend. It’s yet another pattern out of Cookie A’s Sock Innovation book, and it was a lovely knit. Being a lace in knit, with every other row being a plain knit round, the sock went quite quickly.
Of course, the discerning amongst you may notice that my socks aren’t the same length. You’d be correct. Whilst I was knitting the first sock I got to the point in the pattern where Cookie tells you to start the heel flap and I looked at my sock and decided to knit another repeat since they seemed rather short. I tend to make my socks around 7 to 7.5” in length for the leg and these just didn’t seem long enough.
I continued through the rest of the sock, kitchenered the toe, woven in the ends, and tried on my sock to admire it as a thing of beauty. Except that the cuff wouldn’t fit with the leg of the sock fully extended. Baffled and befuddled, I measured the leg of the sock on my sock blocker. 9.5 inches. I took the sock off the blocker and measured. 7.5 inches. The stitch pattern caused the lace to really crumples up on itself.
Being someone who really didn’t want to rip out more than half a sock, especially given the size of my feet, I cast on for the next sock.
Now, the first sock still needed to be fixed since I couldn’t wear it without folding the cuff down and I decided that surgery was the best option. I picked out the yarn end at the cuff so I knew where the start of the round was, checked where the cuff needed to be in terms of the stitch pattern, and started picking up stitches.
I really like this way of doing knit surgery, though I admit it works best in a plain fabric like stocking stitch. With the lace I really had to make sure I was picking up the right loops, especially for the decreases and yarn overs.
A quick snip of the yarn on the opposite side from my start of round (this gives a bit of wiggle room in case of error), and I picked out the yarn from my picked up stitches. Presto. No cuff.
I double checked my stitch count was correct, and starting at the beginning of the round, I started to knit the cuff in the rib pattern to match the other sock. The one disadvantage to this method is that since I’m knitting in the opposite direction, the cuff is offset from the leg pattern by half a stitch. I hope that Cookie A will forgive me. Personally, I think it was worth it so that I didn’t need to reknit most of a sock.
The finished Wanida socks:
Both the same length. In need of blocking, but both done.
The details:
Pattern: Wanida by Cookie A from Sock Innovation
Made for: Me
Size: 43
Needle: 2.25mm Knit Pro DPNs
Yarn: The Yarn Yard Bonny in Purple, bought at Woolfest 2009
Used: 306 metres (after surgery)
Cast on: November 5th, 2011
Cast off: November 19th, 2011