Again with the nophotos

I can't prove it, but I am making so much progress on the sock. I "turned the heel," as I have read about so many times, and it was a fascinating thing. I felt such a sense of accomplishment. I am. Making. A sock.

Of course, I fucked it up, but I was able to fudge it afterwards. I didn't slip the first stitch of the heel flap rows as suggested in the pattern because I skimmed over that part (I do this often). That made picking up the stitches later to rejoin with the gusset a little tricksie but not impossible. And, as this is my practice pair, I'm cool with it. Totally. For sure.

I even tried it on, after I finished those decreases before the straight foot part starts (are you with me?), and it seemed to fit. The heel seemed smaller than I would have thought, but as I've never actually touched a hand-knit sock before, I am not sure what it should look like or feel like. I'll try it on again and actually take a damned picture, as I've been promising to do for weeks now. I'm still interested in trying to make the second one toe-up, but I also got an order of yarn from Knitpicks, so I'm half tempted to just put this one aside after I finish sock #1 and move on to the Jaywalker socks. Especially since my skein of Trekking XXL is just not cooperating. The inside pull is getting all tangled on itself and I have to pull out chunks at a time and knit off the chunks instead of from the skein. its quite annoying. Has this happened to others? How do you deal with it? Its so freaking annoying, and makes the sock so much less portable.

On another note, I started graduate school this week. I have now had both of my classes, and I like them for very different reasons. I'll elaborate once I've had more classes, and more sleep, but I'm so thrilled. I feel really good about making the decision to go back to school, and as such, I am prepared to deal with the difficulties that go along with it.