Spoke Too Soon

Now they’re saying that maybe one couple from 100 Mile House didn’t make it off the sinking ferry yesterday. They haven’t turned up anywhere. So many questions and no answers yet about what happened to them but their relatives are understandably freaked out. It’ll be awhile before they can check inside the wreck because it’s 1200 feet down. Meanwhile they’re finally trying to contain the oil slick it’s creating. About time. They should have been there yesterday. The Inside Passage is a pretty delicate ecosystem and it will definitely be affected in some way, though supposedly it won’t be as bad as originally thought. (We can only hope.) And they’ll have a tugboat and barge to serve the Queen Charlottes within 48 hours. This is going way back to what they had in the “olden days” before regular ferry service. There are stranded visitors and there’s goods to move right away before there’s a food shortage. The Queen of Prince Rupert won’t be ready for at least a week yet. My poor sister’s b&b business will be severely impacted by reduced ferry traffic this summer. And they’re just the tip of the tourist iceberg in the North. Unless they can find a proper sea-going ferry hanging around somewhere in the world to purchase this will take quite awhile to fix. They’re usually built to order one or two at a time.

Everybody is saying that the crew of the ferry and the people of the tiny First Nations village of Hartley Bay are to be commended for their heroic actions. The village folks went out in fishing boats to help the Coast Guard in transferring passengers from the life rafts and they opened their gym for shelter and gave dry clothes to the survivors. Two hotels in Prince Rupert offered rooms for them when the Coast Guard brought them back. Nobody will complain anymore about all the emergency training the ferry crews have to take even if they’re just employed serving food or cleaning. It proved its worth in this disaster and everybody remained calm and did their job to help save everybody. It was sure a good thing it wasn’t summer! There would have been 4 or 5 times as many people on board and a lot more than 16 vehicles.

OK. Enough disaster news. I finished the Ninja Socks! It’s hard to take a photo since there are no feet they’ll fit around here and they look just weird by themselves. But here’s the scoop anyway. Sorry about the toe pattern written in Damselfly. If you have a hankering to make socks with strange toes, feel free to ask for clarification.

Ninja Socks



Started: February 15, 2006
Completed: March 22, 2006
Yarn: 3 balls Sisu, 80% superwash wool/20% polyamide (nylon), Col 1480 Lot 3037, 3 ply really dark grey and 1 ply white.
Needles: 2mm Clover Takumi dpns
Pattern: Cast-on 76 stitches, 2/2 rib for 30 rows. Leg 9.5” total before the flap heel. Foot 8-1/2” before toe decreases. Total foot is 10.75”.

Ninja Toes
Starting point is the centre of the bottom of the foot, between needles 4 and 1.

Right foot:
Tink back 5 sts (14 sts on needle 4). Backwards CO 8 sts for the fourchette. Slip 5 sts of needle 3 to needle 2. Stitches on needles 1 and 2 will become the small toes. Using a spare needle, continue knitting across the 14 sts of needle 3. As it’s more comfortable, use another spare needle and arrange big toe stitches on 4 needles with the gaps retained between needles 3 & 4 and directly opposite in the centre of the CO sts. Continue knitting around until the toe is 1.5” long. Begin decreases (similar to a regular toe but dec every row): on the needle just before the fourchette, knit until 3 sts from the end, k2tog, k1. On next needle, k1, ssk, k across. Knit across needle 3 until 3 sts from the end, k2tog, k1. On needle 4, k1, ssk, k across. Repeat until 16 stitches remain. Graft toe.

Add new yarn at the top corner of the fourchette and pick up 10 sts across it. Arrange Knit across needle 1 until 3 sts from the end, k2tog, k1. On needle 2, k1, ssk, k across. Arrange stitches on 4 needles with the gaps as established between needles 1 and 2 and another in the centre of the 10 picked-up sts. K2tog at the corner of the fourchette, k across it and ssk at the second corner. Continue around decreasing on the outside of the foot every other row 5 more times (6 times total), then every row until 16 sts are left. Graft toe.

Left foot:
K 5 sts with last needle (24 sts on needle 4). Knit across the rest of the sts on needle 1 and needle 2 to 5 sts before the end. Transfer these to needle 3. Backwards CO 8 sts and continue as for the right foot. The only differences are the numbers assigned the needles and when adding the new yarn for the wider section it will be starting at the bottom of the foot. All increases and decreases etc. are the same.

Comments: I might start the big toe decreases farther down and do some eor dec before the er ones. That will narrow the upper part of the big toe a bit more. But not this time! Reknitting it 4 times was plenty.