Sometimes you are so close to the end of a project you just want to get it done. So you rush, and don’t put the time and attention to detail you should into it. And you make mistakes. Sometimes big mistakes. As in the toe of my sock is crooked mistakes, and not a little crooked, full 90 degree rotation crooked. So you do what any sane person would, and shove it out of sight for between 3 and 30 months.
Then when you are ready you bring it back out and you frog it. For any non-knitters reading this frogging is the process of undoing your knitting by grabbing the end of the yarn and pulling. You may have heard that it is called frogging because you “rip-it rip-it”, and this is a fun explanation although unlikely the true origin. Our best guess is that the term was adopted from it’s use as a curse or disparaging term for the French which was widely used in England at the time we first see it appear in reference to fiber arts. If you want to read more on the possible origins of the word Lord Libidan has a great blog post on it. So I frogged my crooked sock, pulling and pulling all the way back to before the heel.
Why didn’t I just frog the toe? I picked now to do this because I was in need of a portable project that is so simple I barely need to look as I work. I don’t want to be thinking about where to put the heel and then actually need to do the heel, so I have decided to try an afterthought heel. For an afterthought heel you knit the whole sock as a tube then come back and open it up to add the heel. If this goes well I think it will be my new favorite way to make socks!
