my mismatched socks (oops!)

My new ankle socks started out like this. Two little short-row toes and two little half skeins of very bright yarn. The other half of those two skeins went to knit these bright and cheery little ankle socks last June for my marvelous friend Mary (who now has two blogs). Before I started knitting my own pair of bright and cheerful socks I weighed one of the two half skeins to be sure it really was at least half a skein. The skein I weighed was 25g (exactly half of the original 50g). Good! Of course I had forgotten 3 things. One: I knit Mary's socks on size 2 needles and I'm knitting my socks on size 1 needles. Guess which one uses more yarn. Two: after knitting several pair of socks I've discovered that a bit of ribbing on the instep keeps the feet from getting baggy so I knew I wanted to do that, too. Ribbing tends to use more yarn than stockinette stitch. And finally, three: When I started Mary's socks I discarded a lengthy chunk of yarn from one of the skeins so the patterns in the self patterning yarn would match up. These two half skeins were not the same size. Oblivious to all of these potential pitfalls, I cast on for my bright and cheery ankle socks toes first.

I'm kinda regretting that toes-first choice I made. You see, if I'd started at the ankles, at least the parts of my socks that show above my shoes would match.


One of my little half skeins was smaller than the other and, not surprisingly, I ran out. These are quirky socks to begin with so all is not lost. I simply grabbed the leftover yarn from these socks, joined it in, and kept on knitting. Maybe no one will notice... some of the colors are similar. There's light blue checks and dark blue and a mustardy yellow in both. So what if they're different shades. Who looks that closely at someone else's socks anyhow?

Aw heck, I don't know who I'm trying to fool. If I wear these mismatched socks out of the house everyone is going to know I'm the crazy sock knitting lady. Oh well, that was bound to happen eventually.

---

A more thrust, less drag update: 2 more pounds this week for a total of 13 pounds lost. I've got 52 pounds to go. Pass the salad...