Little People Socks

Arghhh!

I thought I had this down. I was zipping along on this sock, feeling so confident. The leg, from cast on to heel, took 1 evening. I spent the next evening experimenting with heel techniques and finally arrived at one I liked. On to the foot!

And came to a grinding halt. The Little People are formed by interlocking cables. Worked great on the leg. Didn't match on the foot. Why not?

Same pattern, different look. This can't be. I must have changed something. Tinked back and tried again, checking the pattern thoroughly as I did so.

Not the same cable.

Got out the graph paper and charted it out. Found the mis-match and figured out an easy solution. Simple!




Erased the pattern notes, wrote out the new directions, tinked back and tried again.

Still different, but different in a new way.










So I went to the computer and used a software program to chart it out. Quite a few times. Finally decided on another simple solution.

Erased and corrected my directions again.
Tinked back again.
Reknit.
Still wrong.
Ackk.




So I decided that I had a visualization problem. Obviously I was missing something. I remembered downloading a trial version of an aran charting program that let you see pictures of the stitches. Time to try it out.

Got some nice cable pictures, erased my directions once again and wrote out what the pictures told me.

Tried yet again. Looked familiar. I was knitting one of the mistake versions a second time. (Note to self: never, ever, ever erase mistaken patterns. You never know when they might come in handy!)




Frustration! I will not let this, this sock foot get the better of me!

Went back to old fashioned chicken scratching, charted out the entire leg pattern, figured out where the stitches went each time I rearranged for the heel and after the heel, drew lines matching them up, charted out the foot yet again.


I'm pretty sure I have it now.

Only thing is, while all this time passed, I had time to think about the heel. I'm satisfied with the method, but the fit could be better. I compensated for the drawing in of the cables by casting on more stitches than usual. The heel, however, has no cables (yes, I considered continuing them down the heel, but decided I had enough confusion for now). It could be a snugger fit. I guess I'm going to have to frog back to before the heel this time.

Which means the chart I've arrived at (finally) won't apply.


Arrrrrggggghhhhhh!