Life Happens Friday, October 21, 2011

I was all set to super CRANK on my Hermione's Socks for Hannah .  But we received a frantic call from our daughter, Samantha, who is going to school in Portland, OR, and I had to drive down and get her.

Not to worry.  She had a horribly sore throat all week, and I do mean Horribly sore.  It came back positive for mononucleosis yesterday.  But before they diagnosed the mono, the doctor thought Samantha had strep throat, so prescribed an antibiotic, I believe it was amoxicilan.  Anyway, yesterday, Samantha had a bad reaction to the antibiotic, and broke out in hives.  Her whole body puffed up, including her face.  As she put it:  her face is one big hive.  Really, her ears are puffy and swollen.  She has ugly sores all over her arms, legs, torso.  Poor kid.

It is about a 3 hour drive to her college, Portland State University.  I got the call at about 11 am.  LOL!  I was in the middle of  a stitch on the Hermione socks. I know this, because when I got home, and picked up my knitting, the stitch was ready to take off the needle.  Anyway, about 7 hours in the car with all of the traffic on the way back.  I wanted to take a photo of Samantha, really someday I am sure she will laugh at this ..., but she will have none of that.  So you will have to just imagine a big puffy fat face on my beautiful daughter.

Before I left, I had finished my goal of 3 rows on the Mystery Sweater, and was almost finished with the gusset of the Hermione socks.

I was dead tired when I got home, but I managed to finish the gussets.  This sock has a very cool heel.  There is a "modified eye of partridge" heel, with the right side rows alternating k1 s1, and s1 k1 every other row.  This gives the heel some strength, but  seems to keep the simple pattern going.  Also, the first 3 stitches of each side are done in garter stitch, forming a nice frame for the heel.

I had also dropped down a needle size, to 00, so these flaps are nice and tight.  Isn't the pattern gorgeous?  Here is what the inside (wrong side)  looks like:

I finished the heel turns:

and here is what the socks look like now, with finished heel flaps, heel turns, and gussets:

 I need to measure how big the heel and gusset are so far, regauge the knitting on the foot, and then chart out/figure out how many rows I will do for the toes so I can decide how many rows to knit of the foot.  Hannah wears size 7.5, my guess is that I won't be knitting too many foot rows.  But it is better to take time to do the math before, then have to frog back later!

Seriously, I love these socks.  They are beautiful.  They feel wonderful.  They are almost finished.

C. A. Losi