Broadripple Done! (and "the ick")

I finished the broadripples today with mixed feelings. I didn't want to be done. I kinda don't want to be parted from them. I'd been holding out on the last few rows, knowing the toe shaping would come and end our time together all too soon. That only deepens my love of this sock/pattern. I know all about Second Sock Syndrome. And what, with socks being new to me, it's all I can do to finish one before the next sock yarn or pattern catches my eye and entices me. So yep, got that whole SSS thing.

But, I have discovered something even more insidious: I have Foot Finishing Syndrome (FFS).

That is to say, for me, most of the excitement is in the leg (discovering the pattern or how a yarn stripes, etc), the still nail-biting turning of the heel and the zippy fun of the toe.

The inches between ending the gusset and decreasing for the toe are pure, almost unadulterated sock unfunness for me. It feels slow, monotonous, tortuous even. This portion of each sock I've knit thus far is when I grow ripe for the next. It is when I put the sock down. It is when I net-surf for new patterns. It is when I start fingering the other sock yarns. Sometimes (thankfully), it is when I pick up the last sock abandoned to FFS and work on it a bit, just to break things up.

I've wondered if this doesn't suggest I should learn to knit toe-up. Well, obviously I should. I want to learn all the ways of the sock. But maybe with toe-up knitting I could avoid FFS? On the other hand, I really dig learning the pattern without stockinette breaking things up. I like kicking it all off with the leg. I like it a lot even. In any case, each and every sock I've knit peters off somewhere around the arch in my foot...

...except my beloved broadripples. Thus far this is the only sock I've still truly loved knitting through the foot. I thought it was a fluke on the first sock, but having (grudgingly) finished off the second, I noted that had a nice knitter's high straight on through to the zippy toe action.

Clearly the intersection of Rob Matyska's pattern and this yarn is knitter's Shangri-la for me. I think I should probably always have this on needles - you know, just because access to Shangri-la gets kinda limited in the world.

To that end:



I'm flat broke and don't even feel guilty...