Public Service Announcement

This is a public service announcement about the dangers of knitting while drinking. You may not think it can happen to you, but please pay attention just in case.

On Christmas Eve, heading out to meet my mum and brother at the hotel we'd booked for the next few days, I grabbed some knitting to take with me. I decided to start a plain, toe-up vanilla sock, something I knew I could work on while chatting.

I did not take into account that I would also be drinking. Not heavily, but apparently too much to knit well *laughs* Even just knitting stocking stitch in the round.

So, as this is a PSA, here are some of the side effects you may experience should you drink and knit.

• You may forget to stop decreasing your toe at a sensible number of stitches, and end up with 16 stitches more than you ordinarily would for a pair of socks
• You may not notice this until some considerable time has passed
• You may decide that you are not in the mood to rip back, and carry on regardless
• You may come up with the cunning plan to make the foot slightly shorter, to stretch the stitches a little 
• You may, after finishing the foot, realise that you need to decrease the number of stitches to avoid having baggy ankles
• You may throw these decreases in randomly at the start of the next few rows, without giving it much thought

You may, as a result, end up with a sock that has a footprint that looks like this:

And a profile that looks like this... Behold, The Drunken Sock of Deformity. It sort of looks like a fish to me!

Strangely, this sock actually fits. It's obviously not the best fit, but on my foot it looks pretty normal. Normal enough that I made a second one, at least *laughs*

Drunken Sock of Deformity is on the right. On the left is the second sock, which presented its own dilemma... Whether to knit it the same as the other, to make a properly matching pair, or to make it normal sized. 

I settled on a compromise, of not making it so badly as the first, but still not quite right. Apparently I hit a sweet spot in the yarn, and ended up with crazy pooling colours instead. 

They swish around the foot. It's quite fun really. I know lots of people hate pooling yarns, but I wanted my socks to pool (in fact, I was disappointed that the first sock didn't!)

So, in conclusion, knitting and drinking is not something I can recommend. Even if you do end up with a pair of socks that have a good story behind them *laughs*

On the plus side, they are made with stashed yarn that I received in a swap. I think I had taken the yarn off my previously published totals already, as the socks were finished before the new year, but at least it's something else out of the stash!

And if you're reading this and thinking about how hard socks are to knit, I encourage you to read yesterday's post *grins*

Of course, being Friday, head out to see some more (hopefully less drunken) FOs, Creativity and Fibre Arts. Have a good weekend :)