This sock has been testing my intelligence.  Guess what?  The sock won.

In fact, the sock in the photo is no longer a sock at all.  It’s a mass of yarn waiting to be re-wound into a center-pull ball.

It started yesterday morning when I decided that I needed a new sock project to start at work during lunchtime.  I was already sort of running late, so I ran into my craft room and grabbed two skeins of Claudia Handpainted Yarn in “Peppermint Mocha”, which had already been wound, and I quickly flipped through my WendyKnits patterns, deciding on Loopy Laces.  I pulled the pattern out of the protective cover and photocopied the first page (front and back) with our all-in-one printer, then slipped the original pattern back in the sleeve and replaced it in my pattern binder.  I don’t like carrying the original patterns with me because (1) they get torn and crumpled in my bag, and (2) I like to scribble all over them as I’m knitting.  I only copied the first page because I figured I wouldn’t get much past knitting the toe during lunchtime, and I was already running late, so I could photo copy the rest later as I needed it.

So yesterday I happily knit the toe and started into the chart.  At the bottom of the last page I’d copied, it said “Begin knitting chart pattern.”  Okey dokey.  I did that.  Well I got three repeats into the chart and decided I better go look at the rest of the pattern to see how soon I should start doing the heel.  I went and got the pattern out and read the next page.

The directions at the top of the next page say to work row 1 of the chart 4 times across needle 1, and then do needle 2, etc.  Well for some reason (I blame it on the fact that it was late and I was tired), I took that to mean that I should have repeated each row of the chart four times before going to the next row.  In other words, in rounds 1, 2, 3, and 4 of the whole sock, I would be doing row 1 of the chart.  Then I’d move on to chart row 2 for rounds 4, 5, 6, and 7.

WHY I thought that… I don’t know.  It doesn’t even remotely make sense.  Clearly what Wendy meant was that as I worked across the needle, I’d need to repeat the 8-stitch pattern 4 times.  Not four rounds.  Duh!  Unfortunately that didn’t dawn on me last night, so I decided to just rip back the entire sock.  I tore it all out, hand-wound it, and set it aside to rewind later.  I grabbed the second skein and started over.

Today during my lunch hour at work, I got to where I was ready to begin the chart again, and decided to re-read those directions one more time, just to be sure.

Man, do I feel stupid.  I ripped back three and a half pattern repeats and the entire toe for no reason.

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Here are the questions for week five of Secret Pal 12:

1) Where is your favorite place to go for vacation/holiday?
Out of all the places I’ve visited, Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia is by far my favorite.  I’ve been there twice and would love to go back again.  Secondarily, I’d have to say Ontario, Canada — I’ve been to Toronto twice, and the Niagara Falls area more times than I can count, and I loved both.

2) Where is one place you’d like to go?
I’m not much of a traveler.  I’m quite a homebody, actually.  I would like to go to Germany someday, if I can get over my discomfort of flying over the Atlantic Ocean.