Saturday Sock Story

These socks - or as they later became known, Those Socks, or even Those Strangely Cursed and Wretched Socks - have been haunting me since 2010.

These socks - which were already the third version of an experiment - were my Portable Project during a much-anticipated long weekend of enjoyable and interesting research (on a boat, on the ocean: previously, two of my favorite places to be). Unfortunately, the weekend turned out to be not very enjoyable and not even very interesting - and that is really saying something, because I am quite good at being interested in all sorts of things.

The experience was a grim sort of personal watershed for me. When I was (finally, exhaustedly, gratefully) back on shore, I had to admit: my standards for a minimum level of physical comfort had shifted. In fact, I'm not sure I really had such standards earlier in my life. Previously, physically challenging was Good, rustic was Good, tough was Good. And I still don't need luxury or frills. But I do need to be able to move freely, to stretch fully, to rest quietly in a mostly painless position.

Quite a few nebulous lifelong dreams of future work opportunities, distant travel, and physical adventure died that weekend.

Ah, well. These things happen.

Back to the socks!

At some point on the boat, trying to focus my mind by knitting - which can be quite a useful meditative tool, am I right, knitters? - the stitch count was suddenly off by one.

No problem, just pull out the error and carry on, yes?

No. The lace stitches were tricky to get back on the needles. Row after row was lost. The project bag was finally stashed away, safe from the rain dripping through the deck and onto my bunk via a dangling light bulb, to await later repair.

Do your clothes become imbued with associations? Whether the socks had become permanently tainted by the weekend, or whether they had simply been cursed by a passing troll, I don't know, but they resisted all subsequent efforts to get them back on track. And the part that had been properly knitted looked quite nice! So I also couldn't bring myself to rip them out and repurpose the yarn.

Stuck.

Enter the WIPCrackAway KAL!

One week ago, bolstered by the completion of my first WIPCrackAway project...

The Forgotten Orange Leaves of 2012...DONE!

...I tackled these damned wretched red socks again.

And 7 days later, after one final and incomprehensible kitchenering glitch that meant ripping out and redoing both toes (?!), I cast off and declared these socks DONE.
I have never felt more relieved to be finished with a knitting project. Whew.

And onward!

~~~~~