Once I decided that the initial incarnation of the gray socks had to give way to a new version, the next step was to free the yarn.  Now this is actually surprisingly hard for me.  I loathe ripping.  I always feel like I’m throwing away all that time I spent knitting.  But in this case, there was absolutely no way I was ever going to use (or even finish) the socks, and the yarn was too pretty to waste.

So out came the darning needle and the swift.  I picked out my ends (why on earth am I so thorough at weaving those in) and started turning away.

It’s fast.  Fast and surprisingly satisfying.  And I really do recommend using a swift (or a niddy noddy, or something else to keep the yarn under tension like the back of a chair), because your yarn is going to be seriously kinked.  Think ramen noodles.  If you just pull it out and pile it up thinking you’ll wind it up later, you’ll get hideous tangles (go ahead, ask me how I know).

That unkinked pile is the yarn leftover in the ball, reskeined on the same swift, just for comparison.  All four of them are off for a nice long soak and will then get hung to dry.  When they’re done, they’ll be good as new.

And, in other sock-related news, Graupel are coming back out tomorrow.  This is the traditional ‘hey, if you’re on the mailing list you get the bigger discount coupon’ reminder (because someone always comes along and says ‘but I didn’t know‘ and then I feel bad, so consider yourself officially informed).