Lest there is any doubt left in anyone’s head, I’m a process knitter. Just like all knitters, I love to shop at my local yarn shops and feel all of the wonderful fibers and dream about knitting with them. But the finished objects I create are much less important to me than the simple act of making loops with a couple of sticks in new and interesting ways. Having to make two of anything is anathema to me – which is why I knit socks two at a time, and why I ended up knitting 12 teeny little socks all at once.

I’m a process knitter. I don’t at all mind frogging something out if I don’t like how it looks. I like having finished objects to wear and use. But it’s the act of getting there that’s important to me. It is the journey, not the goal.

I am a process knitter. I often use a single-crochet bind-off on my toe-up socks. It’s stretchy and easy to do. But sometimes I don’t have a crochet hook with me. Reasoning that there are only so many ways that loops can be made, and whether the loops are made with sticks or hooks is rather immaterial in some cases, I spent 20 minutes the other day figuring out how to do a knitted “crochet” bind-off. It looks identical to the actually crocheted version. For me, it’s even stretchier because my crochet can sometimes be tight. I’m calling it the “non-crocheted” bind-off. I may use it on the pattern I’m doing for Tangle. Or not.

Today I mentioned to a non-knitting friend who has watched me knit a myriad of socks that I was going to design a sock pattern. What’s a sock pattern? He asked. Casting around for a way to explain it in terms that he would get, this is what I came up with: Alice at Tangle gave me her business requirements [would you be interested in doing a pattern] and I responded with a feasibility study and a functional spec with options [showing him my test swatch with lots of different possible stitch patterns]. The preferred option has been agreed upon, and now I need to write a technical spec so that other knitters can create the finished product. The “sock pattern” is the tech spec.

Oh, he said, I get it!

This weekend I spent some of my spare time working on materials for the toe-up sock class. I knit a color-coded sample sock, and started getting together some hand-outs on figuring out how many stitches to increase for gussets, yadda yadda. I’m going to teach the how to fit your foot with no pattern and any size of yarn method of sock knitting, and that does require some simple math. I’m knitting the sample in chunky yarn on big needles. I meant for it to be just big enough to show the different sock parts, but the darn thing actually fits my foot. I guess my non-pattern is firmly ingrained.