Living with the errors of my ways

   I have an aversion to going backwards—and that includes correcting mistakes in my knitting. In rationalizing decisions to leave errors, I balance the gravity of the mistake with how much work it will take to fix it. A dropped stitch about 1000 stitches back? Fix it with a little bit of yarn sewn through it. A major booboo right in the front of the sweater? Bite the bullet and rip it back.
   Two pairs of socks I finished this month have errors that I decided not to fix. I had already ripped and reknit various parts of the Milo socks from Cookie A's Sock Innovation when I discovered a mistake in the cable on the back of the second sock. I decided to not go back some 20 rows to fix the cable out of a combination of laziness and admiration for the way my newly invented cable looked. OK, mostly laziness. If I had been on the first sock I would have made the second one with the same mistake...er, design variation. 

I love these socks and I'm happy to have them finally finished so I can wear them. (I started them about a year ago.)

   In the other pair of socks, I made an unfortunate decision to combine a gorgeous eggplant purple and a knit and purl pattern that is hard to follow. The yarn was so dark that I needed a bright light and sometimes a magnifying glass to figure out where I was. Thus, I sometimes discovered that 6 rows back I had repeated a row; the mistake just wasn't visible until I had knit quite a bit more. My decision to forge ahead was based on the fact that when stretched out on the foot you can't see the pattern anyhow. It does make a pleasant pebbly texture, but the work-to-glory ratio was not good. It's probably a fine stitch pattern for a sweater, but not for anything worn stretched. I'm happy I finished both of these pairs of socks so I can go on to other projects. Onward!