So … Sock Madness 2021 … We can now officially chalk it up as the year I wasn’t paying attention.

See how we have two flowers next to each other?

We should not. They should be set off from one another, by half, so that they alternate down the leg like garden stepping stones, rather than like the rectangles of a hopscotch board. I just absolutely read the pattern wrong, which is a little irksome because I thought to myself that if I’d been designing this pattern I would have alternated them … exactly the way the designer did … rather than spacing the flower rows out by a couple dozen twisted rib rows.

It’s fine. I had already missed a smock on the other side, which would have eliminated me from competition anyway. But now I am left with the decision of what to do with the sock. Obviously it would be silly to keep knitting it the way I thought the pattern had been written, since I already didn’t think it should be done that way. I could rip it back to the start of the first flower and knit it right. In the grand scheme of things, I haven’t gone far past it, but I do not love twisted stitches and would prefer not to redo a couple dozen rows. I could decide I’m doing a variation, with a row of flowers at the top, not dissimilar from a band of colorwork and then just alternate from the nearest spot it makes sense to begin down the leg, which could look a little wonky with flowers that close together vertically, but also might look fine. I could come up with some other sort of variation that stops the twisted stitches once I get to the foot. Or, I could rip back to the cuff, which is pretty and not so many twisted stitches I would resent having to replicate them on a second sock and knit some other pattern down the leg. Thoughts? Other ideas?

I started Ring the Hill tonight and have not gotten very far, because I’m having to stop myself from wanting to tweet out/highlight gems of quotes every couple paragraphs. I’m in a bit of a reading funk, so finding something where I like the language is helpful, but not really for finishing a book quickly. I’m also still listening to The Midnight Library, but it’s also not hooked me so much that I want to listen nonstop.

If you want to see what others are knitting and reading, head over to As Kat Knits for the weekly roundup.