NatCroMo and harika sock update

Saturday's inspiration for my NatCroMo freeform project was "G is for Ground". This worked out perfectly for my plan to unify the two distinct sides of my project so far. Ground immediately made me think of dirt and grass so I grabbed some brown and green cotton yarn and began to single crochet several rounds in brown around my entire piece. Then, to create the grass, I single crocheted once around with the green and then did random spike stitches to create the grass effect. I was looking for a good excuse to use spike stitches again, because I first learned them during last year's freeform CAL. Here was my piece after Saturday's crocheting:


As someone in the Ravelry group commented, the ground really grounded my piece!

Today's inspiration was "H is for Honey". So, I got some bright yellow yarn and decided to crochet some corkscrews to represent dripping honey. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out:


My knitting goal for this weekend was to finish the harika sock. I finished the foot pattern on Friday night and started knitting the toe, which was back to the knit two in one color, purl two in the other color. I made it easier on myself this time and put the purling yarn in my right hand and that went much smoother. I can knit in continental style much better than I can purl. But, I did learn to purl with my left hand for the first time with this project, so I can do it! It just slows me down. Anyway, I knit (and purled!) along on the toe until this morning when I reached the 16th round of the toe and thought, this foot is looking awfully long!


I tried it on and it was already big enough to cover my foot and I still had about 10 rounds to go.

So, I thought... do I just kitchener it closed now with 50+ stitches on the needles? No, that would probably look bad. Do I just finish the sock as the pattern is written and give the socks to someone with longer feet? No, these socks were too much of a learning experience and I really want to keep them for myself. They're not perfect, but I like them. After ALL this work, I want to be able to wear them when I'm done! Well, that really left only one other option... frogging... rip it, rip it, rip it... I put it off as long as I could. I went online and got my crochet inspiration for today and crocheted the corkscrews (Hmmm... I could have crocheted more of them, eh?)... I ate lunch... I calculated on paper exactly how many rows I wanted to rip out... I double-checked... I probably checked again... and then I did it:


Then I had to carefully get all 64 of those live stitches back on the needles - yikes!:


I know some of them are twisted, but I didn't care, I just wanted them ON the needles. And I didn't want to have to frog back any further. It really wasn't TOOO bad, 64 stitches are now back on the needles, waiting to be knit (and purled) once again:


Now, my plan is to decrease every round from this point on, instead of the graduated decreases that the pattern calls for. This will get me to the correct number of stitches after 16 rounds instead of the 50+ stitches I had after 16 rounds before I frogged. I'm hoping this won't make the foot look too pointy, but it's the only way I can get 72 stitches down to 28 without having a sock that is way too long for my foot.

I hope this works! I really don't want to have to frog this AGAIN!!

Wish me luck!