What an appropriate subject on this Holy day, huh? Faith. I've learned a lot about faith since I've started knitting. Specifically, since I've started knitting socks.
When you start out knitting your first scarf, it's pretty simple to see the finished product before you even start. The directions usually say something like "knit back and forth until you run out of yarn" or something similar. But it makes sense immediately - you are going to be knitting a strip of fabric that is shaped like a long rectangle.
Maybe you're like me and graduated next to hats. Again, a relatively simple project. By joining your ends of yarn, you wind up with a circle and by continuing to knit upward, you gradually decrease stitches and, voila! A hat!
But then there's socks. I don't know about you, but no matter how many times I looked at that first pattern, I could not even begin to imagine how it would equal sock. Funny words like gusset, weird instructions like slip 1, knit 1. How could that possibly turn out to be a sock? But people before you have created socks following similar instructions and so you persevere, telling yourself that a patterned knit tube would make a nice wristwarmer or zucchini cozy, should you fail. You slip 1. Then you knit 1. And pretty soon you understand the making of a heel flap.
Then comes the gusset. Ay! Pick up and knit? Does that mean pick up a new stitch and then knit it? Pick up a stitch knitwise? Pick up and knit one of the slipped stitches? Pick up all the stitches first and then knit them? You fumble around at bit, tink a lot and look closely at the gussets of store-bought socks and finally you manage to create a passable gusset.
Turning the heel becomes an easy task after flapping and gusseting, it just takes a little concentration. And by this time you don't think the pattern writer is some southern belle who gives you her prize winning peach cobbler recipe MINUS one ingredient so you can never duplicate it exactly. You no longer consider wearing a safety helmet to knitting class. You have in your hands something that is beginning to look rather like a sock! You're impressed with yourself.
It's all a lovely mindless knit until you get to the toe. Or perhaps you pass the toe and have to frog back to something that would fit human feet. Easy to get back on track. The toe is another simple bit unless you're like me and get all excited about finishing that you stop paying attention to what is a decrease row.
But soon you have a sock. A beautiful sock. That fits your foot! Yay! And you did it all because of faith. Faith that the instructions were right. Faith that you were following the instructions correctly. Faith that knitters before you have conquered that very sock and come out the victor. Sock knitters have faith.
I've knit four pairs of socks and have become somewhat jaded about my sock faith. But Wednesday I started my first toe-up sock and had to reexamine my belief in socks once again. Learning a new cast on, not understanding how it was all coming together, seeing a big mess of a triangle and wondering how I was going to convince my knitting friends that I actually do know how to knit. Oh, the pressure!
But the sock did not let me down.
Toe cap completed, Marnie's Wyvern socks on the way to FO!
Trying to get a good picture of yourself in a hat is difficult. This one is blurry, but at least my head is in the frame.
Better shot of the colors and the "target". I just looked the yarn up on Ravelry - Berocco Foliage is the name. Looks like crayons in a box, doesn't it?
. So far, this toe seems to fit my foot the best. I'm going to try all the versions in the book before I make the final call. I like the book a lot simply for all the heel and toe variations. 
