Boyfriend SOCK Curse?!

We've all heard that knitting your boyfriend a sweater is a sure-fire way to end the relationship - the Boyfriend Sweater Curse is an infamous one spread between knitters the world around and, while (of course) not actually based in fact, backed up by countless tales of woe and heartbreak. I thought I was safe from this as I'm sticking to socks but... things haven't been going well.

At least they're pretty.

I suppose my first mistake was choosing a pattern with cables. I know that cables make me put a lot of extra strain on the needles, and that sock needles are fragile, and I've broken them in the past by being too rough with them. But the yarn was just begging to be show off a pattern like the one in Alice Bell's Boyfriend Socks - it has only a little variation in colour and great stitch definition, and why wouldn't you want to cable a yarn like that?

Well, broken needles is why.

The first I broke myself early on in the cabling while I was knitting one evening in front of the tv. It's possible that I was getting a little sleepy and not paying enough attention to how I was holding the needles, or perhaps I'd strained that one too much in the past and this was simply its final straw. Whatever the reason I felt that awful, final snap and immediately froze. How many stitches had immediately slipped from the needle? Had it - god forbid - happened in a cable section that could even now be unravelling its way down the sock?

Luckily only a handful of stitches had escaped, and they were all knit. I still seem to panic every time I have to pick up escaped stitches so this was the best case scenario. If only it was the last scenario.

One morning, while sitting at a desk waiting for something to happen that would require my attention (and looking out longingly at the sunshine that I wouldn't be actually enjoying unless something came up outdoors at some point), I pulled the socks from my bag and set to work. I untangled the yarn, pulled the stitches up to the end of the needle, and set about to begin: but something was strange. The needle tips were catching on each other. It felt like there was a groove somewhere... and there was.

The needle tip had, at some point since I'd used it last the afternoon before, snapped right off. It was only a tiny amount but a little is as damaging as a lot: a second needle was dead.

Thankfully, fearing clumsiness would cost me more of these needles, I'd brought both of my spares along for the project. The first had subbed in for the first break, and the second would be stepping in now. I'm seven inches along the foot (slowly but surely approaching the heel) and if another needle breaks I'm dead in the water until some replacements can arrive.

Broken needles haven't been the only trouble I've had either. Something about the yarn makes it feel slippery on the needles (so easy to work with!) but sticky against my fingers. Countless times (I have genuinely lost count) I've slid the stitches along the needle, whether to move up so I can work them or to move down out of the way, and they slipped just a little too far and straight off the needle.

Thankfully it's going along fairly quickly, the yarn is beautiful, and they look excellent. A number of parents (and one of the kids I was supervising, too) stopped to admire the socks and marvel in the cleverness it must take to make them. All I can say is that, by the time they're done, they sure as heck better fit.