All Tangled Up

Call me crazy – I decided to cast-on La digitessa by Yarnissima.  What’s so crazy about that you ask?  Well, for starters, lets take the warning that her brilliant creator has given us:

“She is demanding. She certainly has a will of her own. She is elegance in person. She’s exciting!”

At the time, I thought to myself – “self, she does sound exciting, she certainly looks elegant.  You’ve tackled complicated patterns before. You can most certainly tame her.” And so onto the needles she went. I did not heed the warning.  

But wait a minute – since I am such an ambitious sock wrangler, why not cast-on both socks at the same time.  That way I can tame both digitessas at the same time.  What a brilliant idea!

Now, there’s another small fact that I should mention that confirms my complete foolishness…we sold our house and bought another.  Over the Christmas holidays.  With a 20 day closing period.  Um, what were we thinking?  Did we not realize that every single person in the universe seems to have taken time off over the holidays?  And yet, I thought to myself, no problem, we can do it and in my free time (ha ha ha!!!!)  I can tame those feisty little socks.

So in my copious amounts of free time, I cast on the two sassy socks and happily knit away at the toes, and then the instep and onto the gusset and - oops – I dropped a couple of stitches.  No problem, I’ll just frog back a little.  I’ll pick those finicky little travelling stitches right back up – oops missed a couple. No problem, I’ll just frog back a little more.  Gah!  Those **** stitches ***!  OK.  I’ll rip back to the toe.  Now at this point, I was just a little frustrated.  I took a step away from the needles, regained my composure and continued on.  Great.  Things are going so well now.  I was almost done the foot when – SNAP! The circular lay broken in my hands.  I told myself “Self, you will not lose your cool. You have a plan B after all, you have dpns in your knitting bag don’t you? LA digitessa has not won yet, she will yet be tamed. Even if you have to do it one sock at a time.”

I painstakingly picked up those troublesome travelling stitches.  I continued knitting 2 more rows, smugly thinking to myself that I have finally won the battle with this sassy sock.  And then – SNAP!  there goes another needle. I cursed just a little, I clenched my jaw, and HA! I pulled out a 6th dpn from its case.  I stabbed those runaway stitches back onto the new needle, maybe a little more forcefully than was needed.  And then I had a revelation! I don’t need the stress and aggravation. Knitting is supposed to be relaxing.  I’ll just frog the whole thing! 

I muttered under my breath as my hand reached to pull out one of the needles  “you impertinent digitessa…I’ll rip you apart, you’re just not worth it…” But, there she was, so elegant, so captivating… I lost my resolve. 

So call me crazy, she’s impertinent, she’s a diva but I’m in love with this pair of socks.  And I will finish - eventually.

The impertinent one before the first incident