Does this look like ribbing to you?
July 22nd, 2004 by Donna
In an ingenious move, I swapped a pair of handknit socks for some web design work. While I can move pixels around with the best of them, there’s a darn steep learning curve in designing, and I was more than happy to hand off what I considered the hard work. 
I’m making a pair of “Ribtips” socks, pattern courtesy of Rob, a 2×2 rib in Fixation colorway 9880. These socks are helping me confront my Fear of Ribbing. As a relatively new knitter, I feel a certain amount of reassurance when I know I’ve mastered a technique. Whenever I knit ribbing, the first few rows look wonky, leading me to ask questions like “was my cast-on too loose?” or “am I a bad knitter?” however, pressing on yields fine results. 
See? These were also Knitting in Public - I took them through three airports and one college campus for a conference. By the way, I’d just like you to boggle along with me for a moment - I took these photos with my Palm Pilot. My new Palm Pilot, which has throwaway features like a digital camera, takes better pictures than my digital camera. Which I should just throw away. Ba-dum-bum. Thanks, folks, I’ll be here all week. Don’t forget to tip your waitress.
Bonus link: a (quite beautiful) car covered with yarn.
Wow! Thank you for the yarn car link… I will be crediting you in my notes on it later today.
Also, I got a great giggle out of the secret KIPing. My fiance has really been bugging me to try casting on some leftover udon noodles on my chopsticks whenever we are at a noodlehouse for dinner… just to give the dishwasher some food for thought.
I am appropriately mind-boggled by BOTH pictures. I know exactly what you mean by the first few rows of ribbing. I feel this way with every pair of socks I make. Then they’re done, and wow, the edging looks fine. Knitting is so clever.
Lovely sock yarn — and fantastic ribbing.
And that car!?! Wowza.
Ribbing always tends to work itself out. It’s magic.
Hey.. Im Sarah, a knitter, of course.. I started doing the ribtips socks, but I lost my pattern. I know it was a pdf file, but I cant find the link to it ANYWHERE on Rob’s site. Do you still happen to have the link to it? Im about 5 inches into the ribbing, and Im pulling my hair out trying to find it. You can email me at SWaller@gmail.com . Thanks!!!!
I’m knew to the blogging world, so I just found your site and read the blurb about the ribbing with Fixation. I’m knitting a hat with Fixation now and my ribbing looked a little different than ribbing in a wool yarn, but after doing a couple of inches it seems to be fine. However, it was nice to hear that others have the “what am I doing wrong” syndrome occasionally.