Minty Mind Meld

First, thanks for all the well-wishes. I am on the mend, although I sound like a 3 pack-a-day smoker when I cough.

There must have been some kind of knitters mind meld between Minty and me last week.

Before leaving for my Chicago trip, I had to go through the traditional "what knitting to pack" deliberations. I usually travel with socks, and wanted to use some gorgeous Koigu in the stash. As a general rule, Koigu gets knitted first. Koigu does not marinate. It deserves to be moved to the front of the queue. It demands to be knit. But what pattern to choose? I pawed through the usual suspects, and found nothing that worked with Queen KPPPM.

Then I thought of one of my favorite blog-friends and budding sock designer, Minty. She has designed some great patterns, and shares my deep affinity for the KPPPM and the toe-ups. I went with Anastasia, since it seemed the simplest, and really, that's what I want in my socks lately. And its an homage to Anastasia Krupnik, one of my girlhood heroes.

And while I was choosing my favorite Minty pattern, I was winning yarn at her blog! Yay!

I love this fuschia Koigu so very much, and Minty's pattern is the bomb, but I just made mistakes galore on these socks. And not just on the first one. I truly suck at short-row heels. Not at the actual making of the short rows and the picking up the wraps. Those are lovely! No, my holes are always at the join of the heel and the instep, and even picking up stitches over the gap looks ugly. This is why the Widdershins heel flap is my savior, but unfortunately, I do not have it committed to memory (yet) and thus was stuck with ugly short row heels. At least it sort of blends with the pattern.

My Anastasias kept me company while I was sick in bed, and in my feverish state I continued to make errors. The final one was to cast off the second sock far too soon, and they are noticeably different lengths. In my illness-induced malaise, I didn't care enough to re-do.

And as I blog-surfed over the weekend, I noticed poor Minty was afflicted with the same inertia when faced with a simple fix on her latest pair of socks.

I too have not had the urge to even out these socks, much less re-do the heels to make them presentable. But they may be frogged. Why?


The siren call of the leftover fuschia Koigu and another particularly demanding green KPPPM colorway ended up becoming this:

Am I crazy? Should I frog the socks in service of CHEVRON MADNESS that is sweeping the internets? Or should I just let an FO be actually finished? I'm torn. Leave a comment.