Take Three

About a year ago I purchased some lovely yarn from KnitPicks. It was from their Stroll line of sock yarns, a lovely Ash Tweed. And so I cast on one of Wendy Johnson's lovely patterns, Diagonal Lace Socks, and all was going well.

....until I lost focus on the heel. Now I've knit a lot of socks in the past year, and the heel isn't intimidating to me any more. But a year ago, it was still pretty new territory for me. And I goofed. My goof resulted in a small flap of fabric on the inside of each heel. Initially I told myself, "It's INSIDE the heel. No one will ever know but me." So I continued to knit. BIG mistake. Even though no one knew about the goof other than me, I found myself avoiding working on the socks. Even when I did pick them up to work on them, that little odd flap of fabric inside the heels just made me NUTS.

So, in March I caved in, raveled the yarn, and rewound it back into two neat little yarn cakes. (This was before I learned the wisdom of putting in a lifeline before beginning the heel.) About a month ago I needed a "take along" project for a day trip and decided that a pair of plain vanilla socks would be just the thing. Waiting patiently in my stash basket were the two neat little cakes of Ash Tweed Stroll. Into my knitting project bag they went with the appropriate circular needles.

I worked happily on the socks while I was on my day trip and used them to fill odd times in waiting rooms and such. I wasn't making big progress on them, but they were certainly filling my need for an occasional "don't need to read a pattern" project.

Yesterday afternoon I had a doctor's appointment, so on my way out the door I grabbed my plain vanilla socks to work on in the waiting room. When I pulled them out of the canvas bag, I found that during my last rushed session working on them, I'd failed to pull the needle far enough through to prevent stitches from popping off one of the needles.

I sat in the waiting room, trying to make a decision. Okay, I could probably recreate the stitches that had popped off without too much grief. Then I looked at the plain little socks in my hand and thought, "You know, this yarn needs something more than plain 3-1 ribbing to show it off." So, while waiting, I frogged the socks. What's next? I'm leaning toward the Michigan Lake Shore Socks pattern I knitted back in April. Last time I knitted them from Sockotta so I'd have pretty summery cotton socks. But I really think this pattern will look good in this ash gray, too.

And so, take three on the same yarn. Keep your fingers crossed! :-)