Time out!

This yarn went in the naughty chair, but I was the one who lost my temper and pulled out my sock so maybe I should sit in the chair.  I got this far:

Then I deliberated about what type of heel to use.  After way too much dithering, I decided to do a short row heel.  It’s not very roomy, but I didn’t think I would need much room because lace pattern are so stretchy (you can see how much stretch is possible even on the photo above).  I don’t have a go-to short row heel, though.  I’ve only knit it a few times.  I googled and landed on some instructions from Wendy Knits.  They weren’t super intuitive to me but I forged on.  (Ironically, this lace pattern is by Wendy and she calls for a short row heel – but she does it over 66 or 74 stitches and that’s way more than the 60 I had so I passed it by.)   I goofed up once and double-wrapped a stitch, but I unknit and corrected it.  I stopped for the night when I was halfway through the heel, ready to pick up the wraps on my second half.  I remembered that Cat Bordhi’s way of picking up the wraps is really seamless and perfect, so I refreshed my memory of her method by watching her videos (here and here).  In doing so, I realized that she put her wraps in a little different than the Wendy formula I used.  Oops, but not too much, I thought.  But those wraps did NOT pick up right.  BIG HOLES.  Frustration.  I might have said a bad word.

I knew I would have to rip the heel all the way back and start again.  And then I thought: you know, my lace modification is fine for the foot but isn’t going to fit perfectly around the leg (these toe-up approaches always surprise me – I am so much less proficient at them than at top-down socks).  And I also thought “I don’t even like lace socks! How did I talk myself into this pattern?!?”

So I ripped it alllllllllll back and messed around on Ravelry, trying to pick another pattern.  Then I harumphed to bed, thoroughly dissatisfied with myself.

Maybe tonight I’ll start the Elm pattern with this yarn.  It’s a Cookie A design (blessedly top-down – you can count on Cookie to be top-down) in Clara’s book The Knitter’s Book of Socks.  I doodled around in Ravelry reading people’s project notes and many find this sock to be too small/tight.  The circumference is 60 stitches.  But that usually works fine for me, so I’m planning to forge ahead.