One of These Things is Not Like the Other . . .

Granted, it appears that one Fawkes sock is done and one is not. And if you look closely, you can see that the yarn is an appreciably different color on the one that appears done (but isn't), which actually irritates me, because it's all the same skein and when you use only one skein of yarn for a project (no dye lot to match) you like to think that the color saturation will remain reasonably similar from beginning to end - but in this case, not so much, I'm afraid.

Excuse me while I channel my inner John Belushi:
But Noooooooooooooooooo . . . those aren't the differences I'm talking about. Look again - because you might have thought it was the camera angle. It's not. The calf on the unfinished sock is one repeat longer than on the apparently finished sock. This was blithely pointed out to me on Thursday by a work colleague (whom I taught to knit . . . ). The conversation went something like this:

"Hey, you want to see the latest socks?"
"Yeah . . . um, A, why is one longer than the other?"
"Wha???? They're not."
"They're not?"
"They are?"
"Maybe one is just stretched out more . . . "
"Shit (insert the worse curse word of your choice here - I did . . . one that begins with The Letter "F"). No. You're right. One is shorter."

laughter - from my colleague.

So, of course, I had to tell Linda, the Chicken Lady, and SHE said, incredulously I might add, "Wait a minute - you mean to tell me that in all the years you've been knitting you've never done something like this?" And I said, "No, I never have, because you can't count the Amazon sleeves on the Point Five Raglan - that was an issue in the pattern, and besides I did them both the same."

Her response: "It's about damn time!"

She went on to tell me how serendipitous this actually was, and reminded me that I had wanted a longer calf to begin with, and now that I knew I had enough yarn, I could go back and rip out the sock that appears to be finished (again - your curse of choice here), and make it one repeat longer. Which is, in all likelihood, what I will do, because she's right - I did want the calf longer anyway.

So, how did I manage to do this, you ask? Well, I used the row counter on the first sock (48 rows), which translated to me as four repeats, thus I skipped the row counter on the second sock since it was in use by then on another project . . . and I had two pairs of socks going at the same time in roughly the same pattern . . . and I was suddenly seized by a burning desire to make the Celtic Tote from the Winter 2007 Interweave Magazine and have devoted all my at-home knitting time to it and it alone for more than a week now.

I must face the fact that I'm not so good at multi-knitting . . . let that be a lesson to . . . . um . . . . me.

Today's post brought to you by The Letter "F." Live and learn. ;-)