Fix it or Frog it: Sock Surgery

After my first pair of hand-knitted socks got a giant hole in them, I couldn’t throw them out without at least trying something to salvage them. I knitted them in Northern Bee Studio’s Yak Sock, and I have plenty of yarn leftover. It was time to take drastic action. My plan was to thread a needle through the stitches somewhere below the hole, cut the sock (eek!) and unravel down to the needle. Then I could reknit the toe of the sock, and no one would be the wiser. What could possibly go wrong, right?

Everything was going according to plan. I threaded the needle onto the stitches. I took a deep breath and cut the sock. After tinking back a few rounds, I got all of the stitches oriented the right way on the needles and transferred them to dons. I did it. But then I noticed something strange:

What was that little thread? I took the stitches off the needles and ripped it back a few rows. The thread just got longer and stuck up more. I couldn’t figure it out. A sock is one continuous piece of yarn. The only loose ends are at the end, and the beginning. And as soon as I thought this, I realized that this was the beginning of the sock that I had woven in down the purl ridges of the sock. Whoops!

So, I got the stitches back on the dpns, and now all I have to do is join the yarn and reknit the sock. It’s considerably shorter than it would have been if I’d realized what I was looking at before I ripped back again, but all in all, I’d call it a success. Have you ever performed knitting surgery? I’d love to hear about it.