My Swedish socks

I continue to work on my Medieval style knitting project. This first sock will clearly document my trials and errors, because I just can't pull them out. The stitches are too small - I would lose my mind. In fact, as I was knitting over the Christmas holidays, I was pleased because I had reached the 5 inch point - I was ready to start decreasing the back of the leg. Then I noticed I had dropped a stitch, within the triangle pattern. It was several rows back. I tried to pick it up, but it just got worse, so I unraveled several rows and put the knitting back on the needles.

It was a worse mess than before - I had missed several stitches, and kept splitting the yarn. It took me about an hour to get everything back on the needles correctly. That row looks awful. Sigh. But I am on my way again - almost back to the 5 inch point.

(The color is all wrong in this photo, as you will see, the yarn is red.)


Here you can see some of the choices I've made as the project progresses:

 

This is the center front of the sock. I added a little triangle, for just a bit of interest. When I started the sock, I only had 4 needles, and I had a very hard time with the tension, particularly going from needle to needle. You can clearly see where I stopped knitting until I was able to borrow a needle from a friend. The tension issue has gotten better, but it has not gone away. I'm not sure what else to do. Perhaps it is because of the small size of the stitches; perhaps it is because the silk/wool blend is not as forgiving as a plain wool yarn. I don't usually have this problem.

Here you can see the back of the sock. I began by purling the first and last stitch of each row, but after completing 2 triangles, I decided it didn't look right. Looking closely again at the photo of the artifact, I decided to purl just the first stitch of every other row. It seems more correct, but I didn't like how that looked, either. After one triangle, I switched again.

Now I am purling the first stitch, except at the beginning and end of each triangle. That stitch I am knitting so that I don't have 3 purl stitches in a row. It does not exactly match the artifact, but I like how it looks. One more triange and I should be ready to start decreasing!