I've been dutifully practicing my lever (Irish cottage) knitting. It's like learning to knit all over again. If the resulting fabric weren't so much better than my regular knitting, I would probably give up. The knit stitch is going rather well, but purling feels awkward. Current practice project is a pair of socks for my granddaughter, in stockinette. The next pair will be in reverse stockinette, to give me plenty of opportunity to learn to purl.
Preschool-size feet do not need the bulk of a heel flap, so I am doing a short row heel on these socks. I have done short row heels before, but for some reason, these gave me fits. Each one took two days to complete. Since I find it next to impossible to unknit (or tink) a picked-up double-wrapped stitch, each time I stumbled, I had to start the heel all over again.
After slaving through heel number one, I thought the second one would go more smoothly. NOT. Each time, just as I reached the home stretch, something would go wrong and one stitch would completely disappear. I don't know if I was accidentally knitting two stitches together when picking up the double wraps or what. I finally decided NOT to pick up the wraps at all, partly because Stephanie P-M said it was not necessary and I wanted to see for myself, but also so if I made an error again, I could back out of it gracefully.
Incredibly, I DID make another error, which turned out to be a dropped stitch, but then was able to finish. And you know what? Picking up the wraps IS optional. In fact, it looks smoother than the heel with the picked up wraps. I think EZ eschews picking up wraps as well. So there you have it - two knitting experts' opinion on wraps.
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