Putting the Blame Where It Belongs

In the way the liberal media are so often given the blame for the Iraq War (meaning that they reported it), my friend Jane is really to blame for this posting.


It's all her fault, or at least it seems that way to me. Well, she's responsible for the posting, not the subject, below:





One day I was feeling oh-so-proud of my prowess with socks and Jane, in a rather wet-blanket sort of a way, posed the question "do you ever have a problem with Single Sock Syndrome?"



Well, I wasn't about to answer that question because, well, because I sort of do. I am, in fact, a great starter and a lousy finisher. But I've had a sort of a banner week of finishing socks and I got a little cocky. I started looking around for socks that could use a little completion in the second sock sort of a way and I found some easy candidates:

But it turned out that each of them had a good reason for their early abandonment. The Opal on the top left is some that I got in a raffle at the guild and had been knitted and unknitted and reknitted and so forth several times. I have cast it on and unknit it myself three times and now I find that, having reached the new yarn portion, I can't get gauge to save my life. Hmmmm....not an easy fix.

The Opal on the top right is what I'm calling my blue cheese sock and it's done on size 0 needles. I think it needs to be a 1 or a 1.5. I just don't think I'm going to like it--it needs to come out and be restarted.

The sock on the bottom--well, it's sock #1 and it just needs to be kitchenered and sock #2 started. But I haven't touched it in over two years and ... did I say kitchenered? Yuk! And I haven't knit on DPNs for awhile either. Well, of the three this is the easiest but ....


But wait ... upstairs in the Maryland Sheep & Wool 2007 knitting bag ... what about that tangled mess of yarn? Isn't there an almost complete pair of socks in there? Well, yes, but ....

An hour later I'm very little closer to solving the problem. I did manage to recover a ball of really beautiful sock yarn that I thought was going to be a multidirectional scarf (until I realized I already have one that's almost identical in color). And I did manage to cut loose the partial sock from the mess. But, of course, I can't finish the sock until I untangle some of the yarn that goes with it. It's lovely yarn, J Knits North Carolina, but it's hopelessly tangled in ...

Yes, it's hopelessly tangled in NORO, the dreaded Noro Kureyon.

So, students ... what have we learned from this debacle:

(a) Never toss three different projects into your knitting bag without putting them into individual project bags?

(b) If you'd just finish one project at a time, you wouldn't be in this mess.

(c) You idiot--haven't you learned yet that Noro can't be trusted?

And, of course, the answer is (d) All of the above.