Yarn Science

Last week I discussed the genetics of yarn - how yarn can seemly have the same parents but each skein can have its own unique qualities and appearance. This week I suppose it's a combination of astronomy and physics - two things I honestly don't know loads about because they both involve copious amounts of mathematics.

I thought for sure that by now I'd have a pair of finished socks to show off to y'all - Poppy's Hippy Dippy Tie-Dye socks. I didn't get as much knitting time in over the weekend as I'd planned, what with wallowing in The Malaise and all, but I still thought that by tonight I'd be weaving in the loose ends and snapping its photo - the birth of a pair of socks!

I have to knit 7 1/4 inches of foot before I can begin the toe decreases - for you non-knitters, make the sock more narrow for the toes. Yesterday afternoon while B was having his physical therapy I knit for the whole hour and afterwards measured the foot and it was 5 inches long. I knit more in the afternoon after a nap. I knit while supper was cooking. I knit while watching TV. I knit later in the evening before bed and when I measured the foot before bed it was at 6 inches.

I knit for what amounts to be about two hours and only added an inch? This can't be right.

I have two theories about what may have happened. Perhaps there's a twisted part of physics that says when one is knitting a sock's foot (because this never happens when knitting the sock's cuff or leg), the stitches compress themselves somehow. You add a row of knitting, a row of knitting compresses into another and one only gains half the length of a normal row. Or there's the astronomical theory: When knitting the foot of a sock, your rows of knitting are somehow sucked into a sort of yarn black hole. You can knit like mad but the rows your adding get somehow sucked into another dimension. I know I'm explaining this badly but you know - math, scientific theory, me...bleh. Those three things just won't even blend.

Remember the episode of the original Star Trek series where some of the crew of the Enterprise is somehow switched with an alternate universe - it's them but the opposites of them? You remember - Spock had a beard and Sulu had that big bad ass scar on his face and was always trying to get it on with the good Uhura? Maybe something similar is happening with this sock. I'm here knitting but I don't add any length. In the alternate universe I'm trying to unravel a sock and it keeps going on and on and on and I can't get it all unraveled.

Well...just as long as on the other side I don't have a beard or a bad ass scar on my face.