This I learned with much frustration, frogging, and reknitting.

This pair of socks was started at least two years ago. Starter Husband chose the yarn from the stash requesting a tighter sock leg so the socks would not slip down his calves. I tried. but it turned out that meant the sock was too tight at the ankle for him to put it on.

The other issue was that I realized there was not enough yarn to knit both socks in one color so that the toe of each sock would have to be in a different yarn.  Argh!

So I put the first sock aside unfinished.

Fast forward 2 years. Looking for a project to, I saw the unfinished sock and decided to try it on. It fit pretty well. Why not finish it and wear it myself. So I did.

Then on our 10 hour drive to Cincinnati, I cast on the second sock and knit happily until I compared it to the first sock. My gauge had changed and the second sock was much larger. And I noticed that the column of ribbing was not made with slipped knit stitches every other row but with twisted knit stitches every row. How did I miss that detail?

I tried and tried to convince myself to just let it go. Why not meet a personal goal and not strive for knitting perfection?

I talked about the two socks with SH over the next 24 hours. He shook his head and said, “You will never be happy. Just rip it up.” No exclamation mark necessary. Just a simple statement.

He was right. I could not bring myself to continue and ripped it up back to the cuff and reknitted with a tighter tension on the yarn.

Then the next problem arose. How many wedges had I knitted for the first sock to form the heel? I was using Cat Brodhi’s sweet tomato heel variation.I thought it was three and an half wedges and so knitted happily away. A comparison to the original sock revealed that was not right.

Riiiiiippppp back to the third wedge and try again.

This time the second sock heel matched the first — or at least well enough. I knit until there was very little of the yellow yarn and then switched to the green. Well, another mismatch. When I knit the first sock, I did an every other green/yellow row to make the transition smoother. I did not do that on the second sock. Oh well.

I finished knitting the sock yesterday and sewed in the ends today. They became a Christmas gift for our middle boy’s boyfriend. He has them on his feed right now and they fit his slim foot quite well.