You know we're halfway there

Half of "I Do"
Originally uploaded by jenn_tx.

After much frantic knitting yesterday, the first half of "I Do" is finished. I told myself that if I got this finished, I could work on other projects this week, since I have a few weeks to have the whole thing done.

I had some confusion about the splitting for the back, but the tutorial at the "I Do" KAL helped. I recommend it (as long as they keep the blog up).

I have to admit, that I'm a little bit sick of the pattern though. It is predictable and easy, but BORING! And with an 18 row repeat, it never seems to end. The flat pattern did seem to work up more quickly, but that could just be that you seemed to start over every 9 rows instead of 18. We'll see how the second half goes.

In other knitting news, the ankle sock got ripped back to the cuff yesterday. I just wasn't happy at all with the giant hole, and, in an effort to avoid ladders, I was working the next two stitches off of the next needle as I went around (does that make sense?), but I was getting random loose stitches and it made the sock look yucky. So it got ripped. And I'm just past the heel now. The hole isn't there - I think what happened is that that was where the heel met back up with the "foot" of the sock after the short rows, and that was where I had joined the second color, so even though I'd done 3 rounds in green before starting the heel, it still wasn't tight enough. I added two more rows pre-heel, and all seems to be right with the world.

I did end up with eight extra stitches on one side of the heel though.......I just K2tog every round until I was back down to 52 stitches, but weird! Where did they come from? I didn't increase any? And does it matter that 8 was the number of stitches left unworked as I did the heel? But why were they all on one side of the heel? And will this matter in the long run? I'm hoping not, but we'll see. I'll keep trucking on.

Any hints for how to make the purl side of the heel look better in short row heels? The first time I purled through the front, and while it did leave a small stitch on the outside, I didn't think it so bad. This time I purled through the back, and I have tiny little holes around each stitch. Yuck. Really don't want to rip the ankle sock back any more, but I just might not be able to live with it.

I may or may not have cast on for a new project tonight......I'm not saying.....

PS - Does anyone know how to respond to comments with blogger? I can't email people directly back after they leave a comment, and I really don't want to have to go to each person's blogger profile. Any hints? I *heart* comments!