Vermaledeit!

What do you get when you cast on sixteen times, knit a toe five and a foot three times, turn a heel twice, and knit a leg once? One sock. That's right. Here's three weeks of struggling with Grumperina's Jaywalker sock:

It's ridiculous embarrassing how long it took me to finish this one. Grumperina says very clearly in her instructions that the sock won't stretch, and that proper sizing is key. Indeed, the pattern won't give a millimeter, and for the sock to fit my foot I had to try it on constantly and adjust the needle size several times (switching back and forth between 00, 0, and 1). The instructions call for top down knitting, but since I insisted to knit toe up, I had to fiddle with the stitch count when turning the heel. I searched online to find a "fill in the blanks" type of recipe for knitting toe up, but when I used the one I found, the heel ended up being too small. So I deconstructed one of Wendy's toe up socks to figure out the formula (which I didn't write down, which means I'll have to "discover" it once more for the second sock...). I now understand the meaning of "second sock syndrome:" for a while, I couldn't even stand the color anymore, let alone the pattern. I really didn't think I'd want to knit another one of these. But now I love sock #1! So there's hope for a companion....