I'm sure you noticed from my last post I was very excited about the Coreolis Sock pattern. Really ready to stimulate my creative cortex and stretch my learning horizons. Well that went fizzle in a hurry! One of my personal shortcomings is a lack of thoroughness, at times, where enthusiasm supercedes the simple practical realities. (Alarming how blogging makes one introspective!) Since the entire concept of a swirly heel and the cool picture plus the 'big name' designer who I've heard such raves about, I was expecting great things from this pattern without reading it through first. I even hobbled myself with 2.75mm needles and sock yarn much finer than I usually tolerate. Well, I finished the foot using my own methods and really dug into the meat of the heel instructions. Turns out her cool pattern was simply a slipped stitch every 2nd stitch on right side rows for the swirl (which didn't swirl in a circle, simply curved up the heel) and the heel itself was a turned heel with wrapped stitches! Talk about a step backwards!! I make a no-wrap heel from Queen Kahuna's book and I have yet to see a wrapped stitch heel that produces a consistently perfect heel like the method I already use! Dreams of grandeur and suffering for my art all went  - poof!
    Once I got over the let-down I was left with the problem of what to do next. I mean, I made my usual perfect heel and was now left with the daunting task of doing something interesting with the cuff without having to work too hard - remember, I'm a lazy knitter per se, and I'm well aware that this cuff is going to take much longer than I'm used to because of the small needles etc. Add to that the splitty nature of this yarn (REALLY annoying!) and I found myself facing a bit of a dilemma!
    So I dived into my binder of internet sock patterns looking for something interesting that wasn't too much work! My first selection was Mag Knits Rainy Day Socks a very pretty lacey pattern. I never really considered that the pattern was for DK weight socks. The lace stitch was a 4 row repeat made rather odious by the yarn splitting for every SSK but I figured I could live with it if the cuff looked good. After 4 pattern repeats I had a good look at the cuff. It didn't look too bad until I tried it on. The holes gaped and the raised knit stitches looked lousy. Well, maybe I could live with that .... no, I couldn't! So I went back to hunting and found another pattern Lacy Mock Cable Socks from Scarlett Knits. It was for fingering weight yarn and is almost identical to the stitch on my Wild Geese socks so I knew it would become a mindless knit fairly quickly. The question was, how would it act with such fine yarn? After 2 pattern repeats I was satisfied it would work. So I looked at the sock with 2 strips of acceptable pattern knitted above 4 strips of unacceptable pattern ... well, maybe I could live with it ..... If I made both socks the same would it look like I planned it? Maybe, maybe, maybe .... nope! I couldn't! Rip rip rip! All the way back to the heel top and start the cuff again ... heck, I only lost 6 hours of knitting, no big deal, right? Ha! ha! It almost nauseates me to think that in 6 hours I can almost finish a sock in worsted or DK and this was only PART of the cuff!! AAARRRGGGHHHHHHH!!
    The color looks a bit off in the pictures as usual and is turning out to be a rather muddy Terra Cotta not the crisp earthy orange-red I was expecting. Can't change that! I wanted the pattern to show so I stuffed a Game Boy Advance into the top. It helped a bit, I suppose.
    After these trial and errors I'm having trouble loving this project. Actually the only thing that's keeping me going is that I know they'll be great summer socks since they are much thinner than my usual knit socks and that's about it! In my dogged way I will finish them but without relish, to be sure!


Oh, the safety pin just marks my 'end of round'.