Unsocks Saturday.

Well, I was going to be all devious, and show you the swatch I knitted for Amy's socks so as to present some sock-related material without having to work on Pickle's socks. I started the swatch on size 1s, and immediately fell in love with it - it was just such a smooth knit. The almost silklike texture of the yarn, the bright and beautiful color changes, the velvety smoothness of my HiyaHiyas... I'm not a big believer in brand loyalty when it comes to needles, but everything I've knit on these particular needles has just flown by.

Anyway, I was doing very well, just churning along, and then I decided to try out the lace motif I was thinking of incorporating into the socks, and see if it worked well with the colors. (The Commelina that's still sitting unfrogged is my personal proof that sometimes, a beautiful colorway and a beautiful pattern equal something very unfortunate.) So I knit a lace row, and discovered that I had miscounted my total number of stitches, making the lace pattern off-center. This vexed me, but it was only a handful of stitches to tink. I fixed it, finished my row, knit a plain row, and knit another lace row. This time I discovered, near the end of the row, that I had once again miscentered the lace motif, this time in the opposite direction.

I frogged the swatch, because honestly, what kind of person makes two knitting mistakes in a gauge swatch?

I did try to take gauge before frogging the swatch entirely. It turns out that lace patterns will manipulate and shift the positions of stitches many rows under where the actual lace starts. More unraveling, to try to fix that, resulted in a swatch far too small to measure anything on. I gave up and put it all away again. That's what comes of trying to attempt a new project even though I clearly stated I would do something else (my mother's hat) first.

So then I pulled out Pickle's sock again, and looked at it.

I thought of how much of it I had already knit, how much time and planning had gone into it already. I thought about the fact that it's a personalized birthday gift. I thought of how much I already had to apologize for - starting it so late, knitting so slowly on it, piling so much abuse on it.

Then I frogged it.

Never mind all the work already in it, and never mind the fact that I was getting perfect gauge on size 2s. I wasn't going to keep doing something I hated and then try to give it away as a gift. I was going to knit these socks on smaller needles (they were awfully thin and gappy), with more interesting patterning, and I was going to like it.

I also frogged the Commelina while I was at it.

And then I had a four-and-a-half-hour-long lesson about why you should never let frogged yarn spaghetti up like that.