New to the Neti and Knitting Update

Finally, I got one of those neti pots. I'd been thinking about getting one, and then my parents stopped by the house and dropped one off when I was sick last week. Love it! I think it helped end my cold sooner rather than later.

Monday night I finished winding balls of my recycled Comfy yarn. Knowing that my kids could possibly ruin all that hard work, I grabbed a pair of pantyhose and cut them up to make yarn bras for each ball. They look silly, but hey it works. I'm about 4-5 inches in on Bright.

Lately, I've been working on my one-skein sockettes. I'm almost at the heel, so I'll be doing short rows soon. Since following the pattern resulted in holes on the short row toes, I'm going to try this method on the heels. She combines all sorts of little tricks into her method. My favorite trick is one that Cat Bordhi uses: slip the knit stitches knitwise before turning so that the wraps are easier to work. When you get to a wrapped knit stitch, you knit the stitch and its wrap TBL.

If I still don't like the way the heel looks, I might use Japanese short rows without pins or the encroachment method. (BTW, here's the purl encroachment from the same site.) The encroachment method reminds me vaguely of the Japanese method because: whereas the wrapping and YO methods create "extra" yarn when turning, the "extra" yarn of the encroachment and Japanese methods doesn't come about until the gaps are closed. Even then, it's not really "extra" yarn. Actually, you're "stealing" yarn from previously made stitches. I think the encroachment method is used on the Sherman heel, if I'm not mistaken. Somewhere, I read that you wrap the outside stitches, but then do the encroachment method for the remaining inside stitches. Hmm... Whenever I finally get the More Sensational Socks book, I'll have to try the various heel methods to see which ones I like best.

If my heels seem too small, I might try Lucy Neatby's 60% heel; or, I could always make a longer/narrower heel (with 50%) by leaving less unwrapped stitches in the middle. We'll see. I just hope that by doing short row heels, I have enough yarn for two socks.