5/29/09 - I just figured out how to do the Turkish Cast On and I love it! It is so freakin’ cool. I’m a bit perplexed looking ahead in the pattern because it sounds like I’m going to only be working with 3 needles all the way through, and that can’t possibly be right…can it?
7/4/09 - Dear Designer,
Please note, the general public finds it helpful if you tell them that you want them to drop all the extra stitches surrounding your lace panel and continue in just the lace panel around the rest of the sock. Also, it is helpful if you tell your general public where the heck the new beginning of the round is.

Dec ‘09 - So I’ve been mad at this project for months because of the whole lace panel thing, even after I figured out how to make it work. I heard back from the designer about what I was actually supposed to do in the pattern.

The extra 1 stitch in the pattern over the foot is to centre the lace pattern down the foot and you don’t need this for the leg. So when you’re doing the leg over 64 stitches, knit one less stitch at the start of each row.

So it’ll be:

Row 1: yf, k2 , sl1-k2tog-psso, k2, yf, k1 (x8) Row 2: k Row 3:k1,yf, k1, sl1-k2tog-psso, k1, yf, k3 (x7), yf, k1, sl1-k2tog-psso, k1, yf, k2 Row 4: k Row 5: k2, yf, sl1-k2tog-psso, yf, k5(x7), yf, sl1-k2tog-psso, yf, k3 Row 6: k

I also just don’t want to have to do the toe-up cast on again. It was fun and brilliant and I still don’t understand how the heck there can be a cast on that doesn’t leave a seam! But I’m not used to doing socks this way so I know that I’ll have to look it up all over again. This is going to be the next sock project I finish after I’m done with the holiday knitting!

1/17/10 - I said that this would be the first project I got back to after my holiday knitting, and I meant it. It helped that I moved to a new house and had to go through my knitting chest to reorganize everything. I found the (very small) pile of WIPs that I have going on and immediately pulled out the lone sock and yarn ball. The holiday knitting kind of didn’t happen - I changed my mind about Dad’s Obama mitts quite suddenly for reasons that I still don’t quite get. I just suddenly wasn’t at all emotionally invested in them, and that was before I even cast on, so I figure I’ll wait to be inspired by something else for him. Crystal’s socks were coming along quickly, but then I found that they were far too tight and would need to be redone on larger needles. So those have been put aside to be completed for her birthday present.

Last night, I cast off for my Cleite shawl which frees me up to go back to my WIPs. I also plan to cast on for MiKnit’s Kissing Koi mittens (smooch!) and I am dying to cast on for my Galileo mittens. I pulled out the yarn tonight and wound the yarn and everything. But this sock comes first darn it - at least, starting it does because I was just too darn lazy to re-learn the Turkish cast on, even though I thought it was fun the first time. So tonight I ripped out the picot edging from the first sock - it looked really ugly and lumpish - and did a regular bind off. Just now, I rewatched the video for the cast on and performed it with no difficulties whatsoever. So we are off and running again!