love my monkey

Have you ever had a project go amazingly well, and then reached the very last step and completely screwed it up? I have. Last night, I was nearing the end of the first Monkey sock and doing the Kitchener stitch--which I have done before--successfully--the finish line was in sight, I was sailing along, and for some reason, I just completely arsed it up. So there I sat, silently panicking, The Amazing Race was on the TV, and Cee was saying something to me, but all I could do was sit there ignoring everything, and look down at this ugly, mangled toe of a once pretty sock, and think "What the heck am I going to do now?!" For one insane moment I considered ripping the whole thing out and starting all over and then I thought "What, are you NUTS?! That's crazy talk!!" I decided to try just picking out the grafting stitches and carefully put the live stitches back onto the needles....have you ever done this? It was painful, extremely tedious, and totally nerve wracking, I felt like I was doing surgery--maybe that's a little bit much, I do have a flair for drama--but still...I think it took me about half an hour to get those 28 stitches back onto their needles. By the end I didn't even care, the air was blue around me from all the cursing, and I'm pretty sure Cee thought I'd gone completely around the bend (yet again), but thanks to some persistence and my size 7 steel crochet hook, I was able to save the patient:


And then I needed the Tylenol...All being said and done, I think the Monkey Bismol sock looks fab. The second time I did the grafting, I did it very slowly and tightened after each stitch, and it worked much better. Crisis (and panic attack) averted, I was even calm enough to cast on the stitches for the second sock.

I will admit I was a little intimidated by this pattern, anything with a lacy look tends to give me hives just thinking about knitting it, but I thoroughly enjoyed making it, and it really did go amazingly well until I screwed up the Kitchener stitch. Also, the four versus five DPN debacle was actually not as bad as I thought it would be. I was able to figure it out quite quickly, and with no brain hurt, which is always a plus.

Nigel the infamously famous sock monkey thinks it's smashing! (And I only had to pay him two bananas to say so!)

I know I said a few posts back that I'd be blogging less, and then I went and blogged a whole bunch, but this time I really mean it. I will be blogging less for the next little while. I will try to get back as often as I can to post, and will hopefully have pictures of countless finished whatnots and thingamajiggies, so be patient with me. Ta ta for now.