Ahhh....Expediency

Here we have the front of the foot of the blue 'Azure' sock. There are actually two of them on the circs, but for the purposes of this blog entry, I'm only showing one. They are knit to the point where the gussets are finished, and it's time to start on the heel flap.



Here's a side view of the sock, showing the nice gusset, all done.



And now we run into a wee little problem, one that's obvious in retrospect, but I'm not really known for my ability to foresee these little snags...



The problem is that it is now time to turn the sock, and knit back across the stitches that will become the heel flap! Now, I could just do that, and ignore the second sock over to the left there on the same circ, and flap all this stuff around over and over again while I knit this flap, then go over and do the second sock, with yet more of the flapping of stuff around, but I'm just not crazy about doing that. For one thing, all the yarn would get horribly tangled up. So, it's time to go to Plan B.

Oh, well - plan B required a pair of 2.5 mm straight needles. I don't seem to be able to lay my hands on those...in fact, I know darn well I don't have a pair of 2.5mm straights.

So we end up with Plan C. Slip the first forty stitches, here on the right needle, onto a 2.5mm DPN. Slip the remaining stitches from the back of the sock onto another 2.5mm DPN.

Whoops! The stitches from the first DPN are already dropping like flies! To the "accessories drawer"! Add two point protectors on the non-working ends of the DPNs, and voila!



The reason for putting ALL these back/sole stitches on the needles is that after a few short rows, it's time to start knitting them into the gussets, so might as well have them handy, yes?

The remaining stitches, the front of the sock, need to come off the circs as well, of course, or I'm still flapping in the breeze. So I put them on a 'holder', see?



And since I took these pictures earlier this evening, I've gotten 14 rows of the heel flap done. It remains to be seen whether I do the second sock on the circs, or transfer it to the expedient method as well. We shall see.

Don't you think the yarn making up the stitch holder is pretty? You'll be seeing more of it.