More Thoughts on the Afterthought

9/24/2012

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Here is my sock...the sock with the anticipated stripey goodness and a heel that looks like a toe. And nasty holes right where the purple heel meets green sock cuff. Man! I hate those holes. I don't much like the sock anymore either. After all the research and reknitting that I have done on these Afterthought Heel socks I have renamed them the Constant Thought Socks. I am obsessed with the damn heel and keep thinking about other ways there could have been to get the heel to look better than this.
 
There are people on Ravelry who write about the problem of fit if one has a high instep. Oh. I wish I would have seen some of that sooner. I have a high instep and I could have saved myself a lot of pain, anguish and torture by just knitting a different kind of sock heel. Perhaps the Sweet Tomato Heel or the wrap and turn heel. Or any damn heel other than one that would never fit me. I've read all about some kind of percentage system to alleviate the shallow heel that involves taking 60% of the stitches and using that amount to knit the heel instead of the usual 50%. I know I do not have a head for math but it seems to me that no matter how many stitches I use for the heel if I have cast on the same amount as I did for these socks the heel will just start farther up on the instep and still have holes and still look funny.

I might need hypnosis or a session of actupuncture to get the remaining thoughts of the Afterthought Heel out of the crevicses in my brain. It is kind of funny, I guess, that I can't let go of this thing. The funniest part about it is that every time I type 'heel' I have to go back and fix it because I find I've typed 'hell' instead. Afterthought Heels.....the third ring of hell.

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Insomnia

9/18/2012

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Ack! I hate it when I can't sleep. I don't have insomnia anymore but I did suffer with it for years and years. And years. I had horrible trouble sleeping when I was a kid. I was an anxious little bugger who worried about everything under the sun. I hated things that went bump in the night and the weird patterns the light from a half open door made on the wall. When I was a child we lived in a hazy, lovely 50's neighborhood where nobody locked their doors at night. Occasionally, when I was on one of my many trips to the potty in the dark, I would lock the door myself. I don't remember as much about my childhood as my sister does and I think it's because I was so tired all the time.

As an adult I would get into these horrible cycles of not sleeping that went on for weeks. When my children were babies it was terrible. I got by on maybe two hours of constant sleep a night and I believe I didn't fall asleep so much as just pass out around 4 a.m. from total exhaustion. I dragged my ass through most of my life yawning and worrying. One of the things that plagued me was that I had a hard time getting comfortable. A hard time letting my body relax. And then I had a hard time letting my mind relax. I thought about everything there was to think about except splitting the atom. My feet were cold. There was a funny lump in my pillow. A serious crease in my jammies. A weird noise. Was that the baby waking up or did the cat sneeze? Should I just get up and read for awhile or would that keep me awake longer because the book was so good? Jeez! I was a sleep deprived basket case.

When I turned 50, for a variety of reasons, I was finally able to sleep. Finally. A-h-h-h-h. It was nirvana. I had lots of strange dreams but at least I slept. And I slept all night long. There was no laying there in the dark on a lumpy pillow wondering if I was going to fall asleep. I just fell asleep and I relished it. I was refreshed in the morning. I could get up out of a warm bed and stretch towards the sky feeling like I could get something accomplished during the day and loved that I didn't have to yawn myself awake. Then last night happened.

For some reason I just couldn't fall asleep. I was tired, I was dragging, and my eyeballs ached when I went to bed but soon I was back in the 50's again where I couldn't fall asleep. It was miserable. I tossed and turned and had lumps in my pillow. I was hot and then I was cold. Then hot again. My husband snored. The cat knocked something over in another room. I had to go potty. My jammies were crumpled and the sheets were tangled. Sigh. I started thinking about how it was when I was a kid and couldn't sleep and just what the hell my problem was then. I thought about all the many, many times I had lain awake in the dark and wondered just what the hell my problem was now.  I thought about all the  things I wanted to do today and wondered if I would get any of them done because, of course, I would need a nap now. I wondered if my knitting was going well or if I just had too many projects on the needles. I thought about my busted serger and if I could fix that so that I could get some sewing done. I discussed with myself the possibility of cleaning out the basement. In the middle of the night I finally got up.

As I yanked on my robe and toed into my slippers I bitched and moaned to the cat about being awake when only the people who work the night shift are also awake. The cat was awake...perhaps I was a cat in a former life. Right away I started worrying about this night becoming the first in a long line of more sleepless nights. I sighed, I moaned and then I flipped on my computer. Seriously? There are nude photos of Kate Middleton? Why are there so many nude photos floating around in cyberspace of people who should know better? Why do people keep taking off their clothes in public? Jeez. I read the story and then went back to bed and fell asleep because, really, that is one thing I do not have to worry about.
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Afterthought

9/16/2012

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After a little hiatus and problems with not only my computer, my bundle, my attitude and Weebly I am back. I chose Weebly as a place to write my blog because it looked so easy to navigate and I'm technically challenged but I'm still not able to get it to do what I want it to do. Some days I'm not even able to get onto the site to write anything. Some days when I want to leave a comment on someone else's blog and add my own blog address the computer says I am performing an illegal action. Sigh. I have emailed the Weebly people about this but have had no reply. It's frustrating but nothing I plan to take any action on right now because I just don't feel like it. I have a bad attitude and would rather complain about it.

I watch the Knitgirllls video podcast and I really enjoy them. They are such good friends and have so much fun together that watching them is kind of like having my own little knitting group. But. They also can get me to do things I really don't want to do. Like knit an afterthought heel. Those girls have some kind of weird power over me. I love self striping yarns and when I saw Laura's version of her stripy sock with the afterthought heel and how lovely the continuous stripes looked I just had to knit myself a pair. Well....The sock is beautiful with it's stripy goodness but the heel is not. After three tries I decided that I do not like the afterthought heel. I just like the thought of it. Oh, the striping is beautiful but the heel doesn't fit one bit and there are two big holes at each side of the fake gusset. The first two heels I knit were way too shallow for me and I think I would be yanking the socks up out of the back of my shoes every time I wore them if I left them the way they were. And I hate the holes. I used such pretty yarn that it would be a shame not to wear the socks.

I searched and searched on Ravelry in order to find another kind of afterthought heel. I found a couple of them that I didn't like the looks of but eventually found one that I could stand. Knitting it involves more plain rounds in between the decrease rounds so the heel was deeper but still....the holes. I hate the holes. I do not have a good attitude about the holes. When knitting regular socks...top down...I have no problem with holes at the gusset edges. I have devised my own little way of doing it that doesn't leave any holes. I have won ribbons for my socks without holes so these socks are bothering me. Plus the heel looks like a toe sticking out of the back of the sock. There will be no prizes for these buggers. The other thing that is bothering me is that the hole area looks so stretched that I fear wearing them. You can see the stress that the yarn is under right at that point and I am afraid that the sock will just unravel from there as I walk. I hate being afraid of my socks.

I am sure that this is the only pair of afterthought heels I will knit. I gave it a good try but it is just not for me. I like my socks to fit over and above the look of continuous stripes and I would hate to give ( I refuse to say 'gift') a pair to someone and then have them not wear them because the heel keeps slipping down into their shoe. I have decided to be happy with a stripy cuff and a stripy foot because it will be one less thing to have a bad attitude about. Weebly? Not so sure.
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