“Padded” Footlets
May 19th, 2005 by Tana
I’m knitting a pair of the Padded Footlets from the current issue of Interweave Knits. Needless to say, I would not use the word “padded” to describe them. “Stiff-soled” would be a better description, in my opinion. I am half-way through the decreases on the toe and the sole is stiff enough to make the footlet stand by itself. See what I mean?
They fit okay as far as the length is concerned. However, the “padded” sole is knit with two strands of yarn (vs. only one on the top) so it is far more dense than the top and thus doesn’t stretch to accomodate my foot. As a result, the “padded” sole is about 1/4″ short on each side of my foot.
The other thing that bugs me is that the stitches on the sole are uneven. The way the “padded” sole is done in this pattern is that you knit the sole stitches on one row with two strands of yarn. Then you drop one strand and knit across the top. When you get back to the sole stitches, of course you only have on strand of yarn. So you knit across slipping every other stitch without knitting it. Then you turn the work and using the strand you dropped when you knit across the top on the last row, you purl across slipping the stitches that you just knit. Well, when you work a stitch you pull it a bit in order to get the needle and yarn through but it goes back to its correct size when you work the next stitch. In this case, however, slipping every other stitch means that you end up with every other row having stitches that are BIG little BIG little BIG little BIG… See what I mean? It’s a horrible mess.
I swear this project is driving me crazy. I hate dropping a project and moving on to something else before I have it completed. But I simply am not satisfied with how this is coming out. I’m not sure whether I should just accept it the way it is, somehow fix it (even if that means knitting the whole thing over again), or just frog it (non-knitters – that means rip it all out, as in rip-it, rip-it…) and knit up the yarn into something else. I hate having UFOs (non-knitters – Un-Finished Objects), but this one might just end up in that category until I figure out what to do with it.