Dead fish…

… but we can rebuild him. We can make him better. Bigger. (Stronger and faster don’t really apply, do they?)

Anyway, yes, I frogged my Pomatomus. I still love the pattern and the yarn, but it just wasn’t working quite right. I have very wide feet, and I think the Anne is a little thinner yarn than I’m used to using (no, I didn’t swatch… but 72 sts in fingering weight on size 1 needles usually works for me, and I’m exactly the sort of knitter who, at least for a sock-sized project, would rather wing it and hope it fits, and be willing to frog – like I just did). It barely stretched enough to get over my heel, and on the ankle while it felt fine, it just looked too stretched out – didn’t look right.

Also, I’m not a huge fan of the YO’s in this pattern. I like that they make it lacy, but I think it kind of breaks up the pattern – you get vertical biased stripes, rather than individual segments. I’d prefer to have the lacy edge all around each “segment,” or not at all. So on my rebuild, I’m going to do M1’s instead, and give up the lacy thing. I think that may work better on my sock, especially given the dark yarn that I’ve chosen.

So here’s my thought process on how to make it bigger:

- My goal is to add about 1 inch, or 8 sts or so.

- There are six repeats of a 12-stitch pattern.

- The pattern could easily be enlarged, since you’d just keep going in pattern for a few extra rows to take up the extra stitches. If you haven’t seen the pattern or don’t understand the chart, this won’t make sense – but trust me. The thing is, it has to be enlarged by 2 stitches (not just 1) so that it’ll still end with a knit stitch (since it’s based on ribbing).

- Because of the way the pattern travels around the sock, and the way the pattern row count is related to stitch count, I have to make every section the same size – I can’t enlarge, say, every other repeat.

- If I add 2 stitches to each repeat, that’s 12 stitches total. Way too big. It’d also add 12 stitches if I just added an extra repeat.

- So, what if I take out 2 stitches from each repeat? That gives me a 10-stitch repeat… if I do 8 repeats, that’s 80 stitches around. Perfect.

So. Pomatomus take 2 is OTN right now, and I’m almost done with the ribbing. It really is nice to have an entire day with nothing I have to do… I can just knit and reknit and reknit!