Translation from sock to pattern

This last month has taught me that translating my designs into written patterns is hard work.

Fortunately, I have friends who are or will be acting as beta testers. One of them has gotten a good start on the whole thing, and has been doing a good job of knitting what I wrote, not what I meant to write. She's also told me when my instructions are flat-out confusing. Very helpful!

I'm also glad that I will be taking a class on designing and writing sock patterns at Sock Summit--I hope it will help me learn the language.

Part of my problem is that I learned sock basics eight years ago, and haven't used written patterns since. Furthermore, this particular sock has a very unusual construction, and so converting the abbreviated summary in my head (which partly uses a three-dimensional understanding of the structure, only not a visualization*, instead of verbal description) into something that someone else can follow is extra tricky.

I think I have a decent draft of the trickiest bit, but we'll see what she makes of it!

*This is very hard to describe. When I "visualize" things, I often don't "see" them in my mind. I have a kind of kinetic feel for spatial relationships instead.