Seventeen Million Billion Stitches

I swear, I've done enough knitting on this stupid sock to have completed an entire sock wardrobe, and still it's not perfect, but it'll do. 

Except for the stitch pattern, which turns out not to have been the best choice in the world, it's pretty much by-the-numbers from that book whose precise name I have forgotten, and the sock design which I have even more completely forgotten. Foxglove perhaps, but that seems silly and illogical, which given the way the book is written, makes perfect sense.

I was so miffed at the Coriolis version of this sock, and I still maintain that it's a flawed pattern, even after fondling John's version that even though I decided to try this shaping configuration I was convinced that I could do better in the decorative department, so I consulted my extremely old book of stitch patterns, the tall skinny striped book which I seem to think is Canadian, or perhaps French, but most likely French-Canadian as that would resolve all my memory issues. Anyway, it's older than my daughter who just graduated from high school, but more useful, though I think she has more potential. A LOT more.

So this pattern (The Candles or somesuch) is certainly pretty, but because you shape the top end of the diamond motif with double decreases stacked along its vertical axis, something ugly happens in the way of seersucker - not that seersucker is ugly, just that it has no place in my sock - and that's why my toes are prettily pointed in both pictures, so as to stretch the fabric and hide the puckers. 

Still, I do have one sock and a toe of another, and I'm going to try removing the decreases to the outside edges in an attempt to mitigate The Seersucker Effect.

This particular sock was knitted in the Coriolis style until halfway up the leg at which point I gave in to my fear and actually tried it on to the realisation that it was a hideousness whose only fate was to be ripped out. I switched to whatever this shaping configuration is (increase every 3rd row along the edges of the burgeoning vee on the top of the foot) and knitted happily until past the heel, at which point over-confidence went into overdrive and I messed up the pattern on the leg. Lather, rinse, repeat a few times.  

The last repetition of this waste of time I did something foolish with stitch counts, causing the leg of the sock to get narrower in synch with my leg getting wider, not a well-reasoned pairing. Actually, it wasn't reasoned at all: I simply avoided all consultation of the stitch pattern, either on the sock or on the paper, instead preferring to concentrate on listening to the speech given by the person who was not the valedictorian, since it was so very mature and entertaining ("I base my attitude on Stephen Colbert's presidential campaign" - what's not to love?) Unfortunately this hedonistic preference for being entertained rather than attending to form and function resulted in about three inches less of sock than before, but hey, I HAVE A SOCK NOW.

And I've been making cute little earrings.