WON'T DO THAT AGAIN!

It seemed like such a good idea, knitting up the sock ribbing in plain stockinette and then creating a ribbing by unravelling every other two stitches and crocheting them up again as purl stitches.  In the small swatch, it worked like a charm.

But when you think of 30 stitches (half of the ribbing stitches--the other half remaining knit stitches), and then think of 59 rows of knitting, maybe it's not so nifty!

Each of the 30 stitches had to be unpicked vertically 59 times, being careful to retain the knit stitch at the bottom.  At first I put the bottom stitch on a double point needle.  Then I tried putting several on a cable needle.  Then came the stitch holder, holding 6 stitches at a time.

The trouble with all of that was that the sock needed to be turned inside out in order to expose the ravelled stitches for the crochet hook.

Marcia came to my rescue with this nifty little gadget:

I guess it's called a stitch holder.  I'd never seen one like this before, but it was perfect for keeping just one stitch at the bottom of the ladder from unknitting itself.

Then the sock was turned inside out and the crochet part began.  Here's the first ladder being crocheted back up:

To process all 30 stitches took HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS.  I don't think it's such a nifty trick after all!