Maybe you have found a solution for the gusset decrease "ladders" by now, but I must tell you I have the same problem. They only appear on the left side of each of my socks - the side you show so clearly in your photo. Like you, I tried tightening up on the stitch before the SSK, and on the SSK itself, with only a little improvement. Since it's only on the SSK side of the sock, not the K2tog side, I feel the problem has to do with the formation of that particular decrease...so I intend to try other decreases that lean in the same direction as the SSK. Maybe someone can suggest some I might try? So far I have found two: #1 Slip 1 as to K, K1, then pass the slipped st over the knitted one #2 Slip 2 sts (1 at a time) as if to K, move both to the left needle and P them tog thru the back loop I can't even picture how #2 would be done!, but it's my intention to try out both on a swatch. Let you know. . . . As for the regular kind of ladders that can form at the needle changes, I have found that a tug on the first stitch of the new needle is good, but adding a tug on the SECOND stitch of the new needle made a difference for me. I actually end up with a slight ridge where I used to get a ladder! Some people give the last stitch on the old needle a tug too. Like you I used to tug SO HARD on the yarn I sometimes broke the strand if it didn't have any nylon reinforcement in it. Eventually you'll figure out where and how much is just enough. Wow, I seemed to have too much to say tonight. Hope some of it is of help. Linda74

A2gemini, thank you for the kind words! I love your kitchen and had spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make the Rixi work as it looks so gorgeous in your kitchen (and Ellendi's!). If you click in the picture, that should take you to a few more pictures at different angles, etc. I also showed some close ups of the edge we switched to which was more of a rounded edge with a flat bottom. We originally had a mitered edge to hide the seam somewhat better than a regular laminated edge as we have a plywood base. What I found out was that some granites chipped more than others, especially when they become paper thin at the 45 (??) angle necessary to fit the two pieces together. JP was one of those granites, so there were more epoxy areas than I had envisioned. It also bothered my elbows when sitting at the island. We also had them match the rounded aspect at the sink edge and the backsplash edge, which IMO, makes it a bit different than the 'norm.' As far as the island, for as many con's were against it, we had just as many pro's for it. I always said I wanted an island in my next house. Well, we've been here 15 years and it doesn't appear that we are moving anytime soon so we made it work. I am so glad we did, it really gets used a lot. We had to forgo the kitchen table, however we still have the dining room table if we need more or formal seating. Resale may be affected down the road, however as there isn't any sink or cook top on it, it could be very easily removed and put back to being able to fit a table. Another issue was with the existing bench seat (non removable as the wall behind the bench does not go all the way down to the slab...association rules against changing any exterior) but it's fine. I am still toying with painting the dark trim piece that is there so it fades a bit more into the background. I got a pretty basket that I set on the bench in the center to hold the daily mail and newspaper....so it doesn't function as a bench but more of an overflow space. Thanks again for your reply! I am happy to say I have not shed a single tear over this kitchen since!!

Annpan - you asked whether I had ever seen the Mapp and Lucia TV series - no, but I have heard good things about it... Does the series stay quite close to the story? I happened to find a title the other day which I am having an extremely hard time to put down. It was published in 1955 by author Brian Moore and has the appalling title of The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne. It's the story (fiction) of a (maybe) middle-aged (definitely) unmarried woman during the 50's in Belfast. She becomes enmeshed with one of her fellow boarders at the house where she lives, and, at the same time, is fighting really hard to keep part of her life secret. Really excellent read. She's not a particularly likeable character, but she stays with you. Reminds me a bit of Stone Angel's protagonist in some ways. And it has little to do with bodice-ripping type passion. BTW, just found out that there is a sub-category of bodice-ripping romance books focused on the Amish crowd -- called "bonnet-ripping".... :-)

Well, I did figure out how to edit the styles on the tablet in Firefox, which will make things a lot easier for testing. You just enter this into the address field, replacing the id number to one that corresponds with your style <b>about:stylish-edit?id=1</b> It takes a little trial and error to find the right number to enter since it looks like each style gets a number when it is installed, but I don't think it re-uses numbers after you uninstall one. So just keep counting up the numbers until you find the right style. Numbers for uninstalled styles just come up blank. If you can use a separate keyboard with the tablet it would make it easier, but using the built-in one works. I couldn't scroll down all the way for some reason in the edit box, but I have the free "hacker's keyboard" installed from Google Play store which has directional arrows for moving the cursor and that worked great. I'm hoping when I am done I can just copy the code and paste it into the userstyles site right from the tablet. The only thing I have found so far that works for the tablet in portrait mode is to set all the fonts to same fixed pixel size and a large one...30 pixels. When I use a smaller fixed font size the tablet screen defaults to a zoomed out look with tiny fonts and lots of blank space. If I try applying a larger % font size to everything it makes all the headers and stuff so big that it is un-useable. The regular style seems to look ok in landscape mode, even with the column layout boxes on the sides. Going to fiddle some more.