Hard Reset

The beginnings of a toe-up sock on Circular needles in front of a spooky Project Bag and a Yarn ball.

This yarn and baby sock toe used to be a rather troublesome sock WIP, and there wasn’t even that much of it. Just the toe, an attempt at a little texture, and just enough stockinette to cover the ball of my left foot; however, the mental space the sock occupied was huge. When I cast-on, I did so with the aim of trying out the new-to-me heel of the Vanilla Reversed socks (<-Ravelry link) by Anneh Fletcher. The pair was supposed to be a simple knit, but that definitely didn’t happen. My gauge was nowhere near the pattern’s stitch or row gauge. Since I’d never knit this type of heel before, I had no idea how to adjust the numbers and measurements to make them fit this drastically different gauge. So, the sock WIP went into time out while I puzzled out possible solutions with no success.

One day I put the project bag in a chair when I needed room at the table. Then I just left it there and, basically forgot about it, until I needed to move the chair. I’d see the project bag, get the mental ping asking if I’d figured it out yet, but the answer was always nope. That got old fast and loomed a little larger in my head every time. Never got around to moving the bag somewhere else though.

I eventually had the brain space to poke at this WIP. The answer wasn’t a spreadsheet or a complicated formula. The answer was try the pattern again later with a different yarn that matched the gauge, or at least came close. I still wanted to use this yarn though. So I frogged the whole thing and changed everything except the needles. I’m using a different yet still spooky project bag, a favorite pattern, and a completely new tape measure. The old setup just made me tired and needed a hard reset back to zero. This new bundle makes me excited, and I’m happy to finally have some knitting I can stuff in my purse again.