The Conquering of Tofutsies

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently bought this sock yarn, and it really gave me a hard time when I started knitting with it.

I guess "having a hard time" isn't really the way to describe it; maybe "writhing in the seventh pit of hell" would more accurately convey the experience I had.

See this blurry sock? (Dug. New camera. Please.)

I cast on this sock, using the figure-8 cast on so I can knit from the toe up and not have to graft it later, SEVEN TIMES. The first couple of tries, the cast on just wasn't working right. (It's tricky, okay?) Then I knit about 12 rows and discovered that I'd somehow knit a huge stupid hole in the middle of the toe. How the heck did I do that? Geez.

So I ripped it out, started over, and got about 20 rows into it when the yarn started coming off the ball broken - not all the way broken, but with bits of the plies split and sticking out all over the place. This yarn is cool because it's made with several different sock-friendly fibers, including chitin (chitin, pronounced "kai-tin" comes from shellfish and crab shells), which is naturally antibacterial and gives the yarn a unique sheen. Unfortunately, it rather forcefully sticks to itself when it pulls off the ball, possibly because of the chitin, and I think that was causing the little plies to tear in places.

Anyway, there was no way to hide the broken plies in the fabric...so again, I ripped it out. I restarted it again, and again, each time having irritating splitty-ply problems. I nearly gave up on it. I threw it down and pretended to ignore it while gazing longingly at it when it wasn't paying attention, like a bad boyfriend.

I decided I would give it one more shot, and FINALLY, I beat the sneaky, evil Tofutsies yarn into submission. My casting on stopped being retarded. The plies stopped breaking. (There were actually a couple of weird oddities where one of the plies would be sticking way out and looped around itself, but I hid them in the knitting and we shall never speak of them again.) Check out that sock toe. That is a sock toe of the gods. It even looks good on the cat.

I'm not naive, though. Sure, things are going well now, but I know it will betray me again. I'll get halfway up the leg and suddenly there will be more splitty terror. Or something worse. It's going to let me down, again and again, but I'll keep buying more because it's just so darn cute.