The Masculine Mis-Steek

(My apologies in advance to Betty Friedan)

Disaster! Doom! Gloom!

During the week I crocheted my steeks; the crochet chain can be seen in gray sock yarn in the photo to the left. Yesterday I cut them without much fanfare, but with perhaps a touch of hubris, as we will see. After all, I'd done this before.

I spent the morning picking up stitches for the neck band, and then settled down for some simple 1x1 ribbing. But as I worked, I noticed the crochet chain was hanging loosely, rather than being snug up against my work. Closer inspection revealed that many of my yarn ends had worked their way out of the crochet chain!

This means I put the chain into the wrong parts of the stitches, cut the wrong threads, created the chain too loosely, or some unholy combination of the three. What to do? All I could get out of Jeff was sympathy and the sound advice to talk to someone who could help. I talked to Staci, and she talked me off the ledge. After discussing the problem with her and thinking through some options, I decided to hand sew the decrease row of stitches to the picked up stitches to minimize movement. When all is in place, I'll do some things to try and felt the backsides to further stabilize the cut edge.

I think disaster has been averted, but that remains to be seen. In the meantime, I'll keep working carefully and try to keep the nausea at bay. I'm off to a conference tomorrow and I think I'll take a sock and put Machrihanish in time-out until I get back. Sigh -- it would have even wonderful to be able to wear it in Denver.