Permission to stop.

That is what I gave myself last night.

As you can see, I didn't get all the way through the heel, but I got awfully close.

I worked the first set of heel shaping and then the numbers started to go off. I was supposed to have 15 sts to graft together and was already down to 14.

When I saw that I transfered the sock to a piece of scrap yarn and did my best to try it on.

I still wasn't happy about the look of the stitches along the side of the foot. The stitches were still stretching open like Swiss Cheese.

The fit along the instep and ankle area was a little harder to determine, but still seemed snug. Even though I was around seven rows short of what the area should be since I had stopped the heel shaping short, I decided it wasn't going to work out.

At that time I decided to frog it and move on. After all, it's just a sock! It shouldn't be so difficult.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming the pattern. I know these issues are mostly my own fault.

It's a very clever pattern, it just not for me.

I know for a fact, from experience based on trying on my friend's sock, that if I follow the pattern as-is the resulting sock will be baggy for my little foot. I don't like baggy socks. Shoot, I don't knit socks for them to end up baggy!

On the other foot, I don't seem to have the math and spacial reasoning skills to downsize the pattern to fit me in a satisfactory manner.

All of this means it's time to move on.

Happily, the yarn does not seem any worse for wear for the abuse it's suffered. It's a nice, soft, yummy yarn, so I'm enjoying knitting with it. And it's self patterning, so it will make fun socks even though I'm going to knit plain ones.

However, I have a lot of WIPs on my plate at the moment and I need to let the yarn relax. Which means I'm returning the yarn to the hoard for the time being until I'm prepared to enjoy our time together.

This frogging business is rather freeing.