The apprentice has become the master...

...of making a mockery of herself.

I have stepped over the line. I have forgotten my place. I have betrayed my acknowledgement of my place as a knitter. I am designing a sock.

It's going to be a sock with a french heel and a partner with a Latvian braid that mirrors the first one. It will be in a PDF and it will be on Ravelry, for free. If I finish it, of course.

This all started, as many things involving my life do, with me watching television. I was halfway through an episode of How I Met Your Mother, when my mind began to wander. At the time, I was working on the third repeat of the Traveling Woman's first chart, which was a decent-enough reason for my mind wandering. It's a fairly repetitive pattern.

I had been toying with the idea of Fair Isle for a while. While I've gotten comfortable with lace and cabling, colorwork is somewhat beyond me. I can't quite figure out how to make it work. I have managed to successfully accomplish stranded colorwork and colorwork while double-knitting, one time each. It is not a source of comfort for me.

Part of the reason I decided to do this now was because I still had three balls of KnitPicks' Sprout-colored CotLin left over from my mother's tunic and a ball of CotLin in Harbor from when I knit my first Best Friend Scarf*. I knew I wanted to use them together, but I wasn't sure what for.

I decided on socks, but knew that Fair Isle socks in DK or even worsted weight would not be the easiest thing in the world to find a pattern for. I was right -- there were approximately eight patterns on Ravelry, none of which looked appealing.

Then, I thought, in blatant disregard of my skill level and design experience, "I should totally design my own."

Which leads us to this moment. It's going fairly well so far. I managed a Latvian braid without much incident and the actual colorwork hasn't gotten screwed up yet. I do wish the colors contrasted more -- there is actually a pattern that you can't really see up there -- but I haven't massively screwed anything up yet.

We haven't gotten to turning the heel, though. We'll see if I cry then.

*in case you were wondering, the current one remains unfinished and will probably stay this way for a while.