23-Sep-2025

Finally completed… with a awkward amount of wool left over, not enough to do anything useful with, unfortunately!

21-Sep-2025

Aarrgghh! I decided to do an extra stripe in order to use up more wool, got all the way to the cuff for a second time, and only THEN did I realise that the reason why I had a visible ‘seam line’ down the side of the sock at the start of the round was not because of an inherent issue with using cable needles instead of double-pointed needles, but because I had somehow omitted the final decrease before the ribbing (probably as a result of unpicking and reknitting so many times). So I had knitted the entire leg section with 35 stitches instead of 34, using a purl stitch at both ends of the round and thus producing a wider rib on that one column…

(If I had been doing it on d.p.n.s I do think I would have noticed, but the clumsiness of having to pull the cable through each time was definitely a distraction!)

The result is that I need to unpick the entire thing down to the last decrease all over AGAIN. These are the slowest socks ever.

16-Sep-2025

I finally reached the matching cuff of the second sock, after ripping it back more times than I can even count. At this point I still have 28g of the green wool left after doing the second sock, as opposed to 37g left before starting it - I am astonished and a bit suspicious that working one row in four in a contrast colour (while still doing the entire heel in green) should make such a difference! As the plan in the first place was to use up the green wool, and the socks looked wrong with only a two-inch cuff, I can continue up the leg for a bit more, presumably still knitting two rows out of every eight in the contrast colour (single colour rows in ribbing look really bad, so I need to do stripes of at least two).

11-Sep-2025

Completed second heel of striped version, but unfortunately the stripes on the cuff make it extremely obvious that I apparently started the gusset two rows later on this sock than on the first striped one - unfortunately this time round I failed to record which pattern row I began the increases at! Ripped whole thing back yet again… with hindsight it would have made more sense simply to insert the cuff stripe relative to the end of the visible zigzags, instead of relative to the end of the actual heel.

27-Aug-2025

Managed to turn the heel on my third attempt, but after knitting 2 inches of rib at the ankle I only have 37g of wool left, which won’t be enough for a second sock. So I need to find some contrast wool and do stripes (which means starting all over again….)

25-Aug-2025

Five inches of pattern before starting gusset (on Row 6). Increases on Needle 2 take place on even rows, i.e. the rows that are also lattice pattern rows on Needle 1.

I got as far as turning the heel and about halfway up the heel flap before discovering a dropped stitch down at the start of the heel and ripping the whole thing back yet again….

19-Aug-2025

I am really struggling with this lattice pattern, making zero net progress as I keep having to rip back multiple rows after losing track of which row I’m on or dropping a stitch and not noticing…. To be fair, it really isn’t very suitable as TV knitting!

On a previous day I wasted over two hours trying to ‘fix’ the results of the special patent cast-on recommended, and in the end it finally dawned on me that it would be much better to unravel the whole thing and cast on the way I would with dpns, simply knitting up one side of the stitches on the needle and down the other. I would infinitely rather do this whole project on dpns (and top-down with a grafted toe!), but I don’t have any in 5.5mm, so I am stuck trying to do socks on the cable needle I was using with this same wool for the sleeve of the Aran cable jumper.