Friday, July 06, 2007

oh crap

Last night I worked diligently on the second Pomatomus suck sock. The leg is now finished and I started the heel flap.

In a moment of whimsy to congratulate myself for my self discipline, I seized the first sock and put it on to admire its inestimable beauty.

The gasp was loud enough to bring my husband running in from another room. (It's possible that he thought I was seriously injured (which, psychically, I am).) Really, the next bit is a blur. I have a vague memory of whimpering quietly, of a few choice words, of complete and utter dispair.

I have no idea how to fix this.


Now, its not as if I haven't dealt with my fair share of knitting horror stories, but this one takes the cake for me. I briefly toyed with the idea of frogging all the way up to the break. In all honesty, given the complexity of the lace (not that bad when knitting but murderous when repairing), this may still be an option. I also thought of sending it to our beloved Harlot because she can fix anything.

I first tried to darn the area by duplicate stitching the broken stitches, but it was a disaster. Thinking about the mis-twisted cable fixing demo done by the Yarn Harlot, I realized that by only hope is to unravel the broken strands for a bit and reknit the hole with separate strands.

Stay tuned to see if I survive or if I burn a sacrifice.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Are these gift socks? If not, and if it were me, I'd just stitch it closed. It's in a spot that won't be too obvious, right there at the heel corner.

No one will ever know but you.

Well, and everyone who reads your blog. ;)

Knittymama said...

Ditto what Natalie says....stitch it shut and try notto look at that part of your foot that often:-)

Anonymous said...

Oh my gosh, MY gasp was probably even loud enough to attract your husband's attention. That's a brutal stumbling block. I hope you find a way to fix it...if you can't, though, I think you should bite the bullet and frog and reknit right away so you can put this tragic episode behind you as quickly as possible.

Leslie said...

Yikes! How horrible!

Do you know why it broke there? Is the sock extra tight at that point? I'd definitely go for just stitching the hole closed if possible. This might make me lose any knitting credibility I have, but once when I ended up with a break in something, I took my two ends and tied a knot. I know, what a knitting loser, but it worked and I was able to hide the ends on the inside. The only problem with doing things that draw the sock together at that point is that it will always be a site for future breaks if it's tight to begin with. Drawing it in may even make it difficult to impossible to get over your heel.

I'm sure you'll come up with an amazing solution!