The Curse of the Poltersock

My knitting is ganging up on me. 

I taught myself to knit while I was at university and I like to think I’m reasonably proficient. The boys have had plenty of jumpers to keep them warm over the years, many carefully kept and handed down. (Daniel is now far too cool for beautiful custom handknits. I try not to be offended.) 

Last January I was given vouchers for my local yarn shop and bought the wool and pattern for a jumper for myself. It was fairly quickly knit but then the warm weather started and the pieces were parked. I took it on holiday to the Lake District and spent some idyllic half hours sewing it up while the boys were elsewhere with DH. The final stitch went in just as we parked in Coniston and the new jumper made its debut on what would otherwise have been a rather chilly trip on the steam gondola. I was delighted and the knitting bug had well and truly got me again. I made DH take a picture of it and everything. 

Fast forward to early autumn and our 30 year old boiler went on the blink. The replacement part needed turned out to be unobtainable so we decided the time had come for a new one. The few weeks’ delay until work could start wasn’t going to be a problem - we had a working immersion heater, an electric shower, a kettle and a gas fire. 

Ah, did I say we had a gas fire? Yep, HAD. A week after the death knell sounded for the boiler, a routine service of our only heating source resulted in it being immediately capped off. Then the cold snap started. 

I did what any knitter would do; I took the boys to the yarn shop. The fact that I was highly unlikely (read: not a hope in hell) to complete three jumpers, even tank tops, in the couple of weeks until we had heating again was irrelevant; I have never yet met a knitter who didn’t hold a deep-seated belief in their own ability to bend time. 

Things were complicated further when I went down with flu. Not just a heavy cold, this was the real thing - bed-ridden for a week and a half and a good three weeks before I was fully recovered. I was so ill I could only knit for a few minutes at a time. (And yes, flu during a cold snap with no heating is exactly as much fun as it sounds.) Eventually, though, I managed to reach the sewing-up stage for Daniel’s and Ben’s tank tops. 

And there I stuck. Those two tank tops just needed making up and then the necks and sleeves finishing; a matter of a couple of hours at most for both. The problem was this: I have THREE children. If I finished TWO jumpers before even casting on the third...well, it doesn’t even bear thinking about. 

Eventually, I found my circular needles in the chaos left by the 8 days of plumbing work (involving several floors being taken up. I am unreasonably proud that I didn’t lose a single child into the floor cavity.) and cast on for the third tank top. But here is my problem:

I’m bored. 

There, I said it. Even though I made sure to use very different patterns and yarns, a tank top is a tank top. And this one is being extraordinarily unhelpful. I found the needles, cast on, put it in a nice bag to keep the pattern with it... and it is refusing to knit itself. Uncooperative, I call that. 

Which brings me to my (whisper it) other knitting. 

I have finally got into knitting socks. I have tried once or twice before but it never really grabbed my interest. There were some teeny-tiny ones for Adam when he was a newborn and the entire world seemed to have gone off warm baby socks. I even did a sock class at the local wool shop and got most of the way through a green sock before the thought of having to make another one gave me a case of Second Sock Syndrome so severe that I never finished the first. I remember musing that I should make a one-legged friend, until my brother pointed out that while that might be quicker, finding a one-legged friend would probably be more ethical. Did I mention that my brother is funny?

What probably compounded the problem was my lack of confidence (and skill) with double-pointed needles. Recently, though, I was doing something on dpns (a sleeve for a baby jumper, I think) and realised that I have somehow become comfortable with them. Then I went to a local yarn fair and a skein of very lovely sock yarn leaped out at me and grabbed my purse and did unspeakable things with my credit card. I decided to channel the energy of this brutal mugging into finally mastering the art of sock knitting. 

I found a pattern for a basic toe-up sock and belted one out in under a week. No problems, all straightforward. We shall call this one Sock A. It was a medium and fitted ok but felt a little big so I decided to try knitting the next one as a small to see if I preferred that. A couple of days later, I had a pair of socks! I wasn’t even bored yet, and I loved the yarn (Lilypond Yarns’ ‘Berry Farm’). It is subtle but beautiful, with soft blues and purples broken up with sudden flashes of deep amber. 

Then the trouble started. The new, smaller, sock (we shall call it Sock B) was perfect - so perfect that I knew the medium size would drive me nuts. And so I did the unspeakable and frogged the entire thing, intending to reknit it as a smaller sock. This clearly enraged the spirit of the spurned Sock A, which moved in to vent its wrath in a most poltergeist-like way. 

It may be simply that socks are inherently devious and like to go smoothly the first couple of times so they draw you in, before they ensnare you in a tangle of unturned heels and miscounted stitches from which you cannot escape because you have caught the sock bug and MUST KNIT ALL THE SOCKS. However, this felt like the malevolent hand of Poltersock A was behind it, wreaking its fury at being so heartlessly murdered. 

That heel, people, had to be knit no fewer than SEVEN times. Not only that, every time I had to rip it back I ended up needing to go right back to before the gussets. I was stuck in knitting purgatory, trapped in a loop of increases and decreases and frogging and picking up teeny-tiny stitches (and yes, I know about lifelines but it didn’t even occur to me to put one in, so powerful was the conviction that after two perfectly good socks the third could not be far away). At one point I even got halfway up the leg before I admitted that the messed-up heel stitch was not something I could live with after all. 

I considered putting the poltersock into time out to think about the benefits of reincarnation over languishing half-finished in a dark bag, but I Just. Couldn’t. Stop. And so I plodded on, knitting and tinking and knitting again until I finally reached some sort of Zen higher level and developed a deep, intuitive understanding of the construction of a toe-up heel that meant I could finally reason my way out of the cycle of failure. 

I finished the sock. It fits beautifully. I am slightly concerned about wearing it in case it is still bearing a grudge and decides to make me develop a limp or severe gout, but for now that is a moot point. Why? Because Sock B is now missing. 

It’s definitely a conspiracy.