Okay, NOW the first Jaywalker is done.

Here's the story: last week, I experienced a very severe case of Knitter's Denial. I knew the toe of the first Jaywalker was all wrong. I knew while I was knitting it, I knew while I was Kitchenering it shut, I knew when I put it on and the toe was flopping sideways in both directions and all over creation. There was no question the toe was wrong, wrong, wrong.

But I left it. I thought, "It's not that bad." And, "No one will see it when I'm wearing shoes, anyway." And also, "What? You've never heard of a square-toed shoe? This is a square-toed sock. It's fine." I dropped the completed sock (such as it was) into the petunia patch, took a lovely artsy-nature-type picture which conveniently obscured the awful-looking toe, and called it done.

And then, you'll note, I tossed the second sock aside and started a baby blanket, cheerfully singing Queen songs all the while. Somewhere, deep inside, I knew that since the first sock was badly knit, I'd have to knit the second sock badly, too. What's the point of knitting a sock that's already doomed?

Last night, I came to my senses. I realized that if there was to be any hope for these Jaywalkers, I was going to have to fix that toe. Still cheerfully singing Queen (I've had "Killer Queen" stuck in my head for days), armed with about 20 skinny little double-pointed needles and a darning needle, I unpicked the Kitchener stitch and pulled back that laughable toe, got everything reseated properly on my size 2 dpns, and reknit that baby. It took me all of an hour to fix something that had been haunting me for four days.

I don't have a picture of the original badly-knit toe, which is a shame; it would have given everyone a good laugh. I was about to say it looked as if I'd never knit a toe before, but really, the first toe I ever knit was not nearly this bad. It would have been an insult to first-time sock-knitters everywhere if I'd said that. It was more like I'd just arrived on this planet via hot-air balloon and had never even seen a human foot before.

In the interest of full disclosure: my completed Jaywalker, properly modeled on a human foot, sans petunia patch.


Don't look at the pasty white leg. Man, I gotta get some sun!