rising to the challenge

i need to go into town to craplight to get some ribbon for the stripey eyelet socks but am teaching today, so instead i started my new, not-listed, SSS challenge, which was the challenge from george to try toe-up socks. last night i gathered my materials, after an hour spent hand winding that skein into a ball:


and tried the eastern cast on as demonstrated in interweave knits mag, but could not, for the life of me, figure it out. loops just kept sliding off everywhere refusing to become stitches. i scoured the internet-thingy for help and found some good stuff, if you also wanted to do toe ups on two circs or using magic loop at the same time, or even 4 DPNs but this was all too hard, i just wanted a cast on that would get me three DPNs with stitches like in the ann budd pattern.

eventually i found this, and away i went - a few trial and errors but then something started to happen:



at one point i managed to go backwards in the round, so there is a line of purl stitches at one spot in the sole, but there is no freaking way i am frogging these, so i carried on, and lo and behold, it looks like a toe....


it is a toe! this is very cool. it is very fiddly to work on dpns with only 4 stitches and i thought i might lose another knitpick there for a minute, but now its moving along nicely. there is a little bump there on one side of the toe, but i can sew that in, and at first my increases were making holes but then i remembered to knit through the back of the lifted loop and they're gone. i can see why you would make socks like this, it involves a bit of improvising i am usually not comfortable with but im trying to be more zen about my sock making and letting it take me somewhere new.

now i just have the whole short row heel thing to work out. and how great is this colourway knitting up!

a happily sock-challenged
k xx