Groovy! Atlantic Waves

No, I'm not vacationing on the beach. I'm working on a new pair of socks, which I've named Atlantic Waves, which also happens to be the colorway of this gorgeous handdyed yarn. Seafoam green, aqua, turqouise, sky blue, and teal make up this totally wonderful, bright, wavy pattern (Groovy Socks, by Carolyn Dlugy-Hegwer. Even the pattern name is awesome!) And it's coming along REALLY quickly. Actually, I had hoped that these socks would take awhile to make - hopefully to pass the time between now and when college starts, or when I get to go visit the campus. But I think these are going to be done very soon. I just can't seem to put them down. They're addictive. I did half of the cuff last night, and this morning I've finished the cuff and turned the short-row heel.

Did I mention that I have a newfound love for short row heels? Yup. They're incredible! No counting rows for the heel flap or picking up stitches for the gusset... just a few clever wrapped stitches, and voila! There's a heel, faster, easier to execute and less bulky than I ever though possible. Whoever dreamed this up was ingenius. Better than sliced bread, I tell you. And much more enjoyable. Okay, maybe not more enjoyable than really fresh homemade garlic bread, with butter and dill and... I digress. My point is, I don't know if I'll ever do the old-fashioned kind of heel ever again.

All wrong, all wrong!

Last night, right after I finished my first Jaywalker, I made a devastating discovery. It shattered everything I previously thought I knew about knitting. Shook me straight to the core.

I've been knitting wrong. Incorrectly. It's why my decreases don't always look right, why my stockinette has a sad tendency to lean to the side. I suppose it's the result of having learned to knit from my mother, who is right handed (I'm left-handed) and who also knits sorta upside-down and backwards. No surprise I learned to do it wrong. I'm surprised I learned how to make a fabric at all, considering the extenuating circumstances. The problem is, I've been twisting my stitches when I knit by yo'ing the wrong direction. Who knew? A spark of insight and brief experimentation revealed the problem, and now I'm whizzing away on a (much improved) second Jaywalker. The fabric is smoother and stretchier and softer. Go figure.

It's a new birth. A personal Renaissance. A whole new way to look at life, er, knitting. I like knitting even more than I did before. Now not only do I know how to do all the shaping and decreases, I can do them CORRECTLY. I'm off to celebrate my new-found skills!