Aran Sandal Socks

Dang. I had just finished pasting and re-formatting my Aran Sandal Sock chart in here so I would have it for future reference when I realized that it might be a tiny bit illegal to post that publically. Bugger. All that work for nothing. Still, as I have little to no desire to find out what the inside of a Swiss prison really looks like, or an American, or any other prison for that matter, I erased it. I'd like to keep my non-experience of prisons and police stations just that, non-existent.

I started these socks because, as pretty as they are, I couldn't bring myself to do yet another pair of the 9 to 5s in the same yarn, whether in Denial or not (oh, those are finished by the way). So I'm doing the Arans. Grandma better appreciate this because I'm tellin' you, the learning curve is steep. This is by far the most difficult thing I've done to date (which tells you how limited my experience with kitting actually is). The pattern says experienced. I figured I'd try anyway. I can always give up.

At first I thought it was the pattern, then I blamed the publisher, now I know that it's my fault for not understanding the pattern. I didn't read the beginning thoroughly enough to understand that they did list the abbreviations, just didn't label them. Now that I've found them, I have to frog the first 4 rows I did last night because I did the one cable wrong. I guessed at the abbreviation figuring that it would be OK as long as I did them all the same way, but now that I know it's wrong, I want to re-do it. Hermione is still fighting with Ron. She refuses to be caged completely. This is how I know I never actually reached Denial. Sad, I would have liked to see what was on the Other Side.

Back to the point. I love the book Socks, Socks Socks (see above link through Ravelry. I can't get to Amazon to link right now), but if it has one failing, it's that they tried to cram everything into as few pages as possible. Great for the number of patterns, bad for comprehension. So, I've gone and written the pattern out. It's going to be slow enough going with this sock, but constantly having to go back and forth between paragraphs to find where I am and what I'm supposed to be doing makes for little knitting and lots of reading.

Should you not hear from me for a time, you'll know that I'm still fighting this sock. I am determined. I am also occasionally very stubborn. Unfortunately, this stubbornness always seems to surface when it is needed the least, like with knitting patterns for socks that could be knit 1000 other ways, all of which would be easier.

In the meantime, a little Zen. This is the only thing that keeps me sane when doing difficult projects. Now, imagine a little light snoring, soft breathing and the occasional yap in their sleep: