time sock update

I've started the heel flap already, so it's looking pretty good for a Saturday goal of peering over the tops of my time-sock-wearing toes while watching the mid-season premier of Doctor Who.

I have a little bone to pick with the designer, though. The second sock (the one on the right - it has to do with the magic loop method) has you shift stitches before you can start the heel flap. If I was using double points, this wouldn't be a huge problem, as you'd just slip stitches from one needle to the next until you had it the way you want it. But with the magic loop method, the second sock in particular is difficult to shift. It asks that you stop 14 stitches short of finishing the chart section, and start the heel flap stitches there. The heel flap should be on the needle in front at this point. To get to the other 1/2 of the needed stitches, which are on the cable at the back, you need to first travel through the entire first sock (and at this point, you only wanted to be knitting on the heel flap half, so you're just slipping stitches for the other half), or work backwards through most of the second. Then, you have to get a double point needle of the same size, and shift the requisite number of stitches onto that, so you can be ready to knit them with the heel flap. Then, shift the extra stitches that you won't be using for the heel flap to the cable at the back, and now, finally, you can proceed with the actual knitting.

WHAT?!?

Why in the heck would I want to do that, when I could have just started the second sock at the right point in the pattern, so that I could just proceed to the heel flap naturally?

(are all the non-knitters totally bored/confused now? I won't be offended if you've stopped reading. really.)

I've made notes on my pattern as to the extremely simple change, and those notes will also go on my Rav project notes so perhaps others can benefit from my frustrations. It's clear that the designer hadn't actually worked both socks, at the same time, using the magic loop method, when the pattern was written. Normally, that wouldn't bother me. I'm used to having to interpret patterns so that I can use my preferred method of sock construction, and I'm getting pretty good at it, I think. But this particular pattern states that it is written using the magic loop method.

NOT!

Perhaps it was written with that method in mind, but worked only one sock at a time? But again, why, when it's easily avoided, would you want to shift the stitches at all?

Okay, rant over. You can now carry on with your day.