Well now...

I just stripe pattern enhanced myself into tinking the second Marine Life sock.  I do love the colors on these socks - six different shades of blue.  Six different variations of Caribbean blue.  In a certain light, there are about three of the shades that look alike.

You can probably see where this is going.

When I use self-striping yarn - which is a lot because I just LOVE me some stripey socks - I try to start at the same color so that the socks more or less match up.

After I caked up the yarn, I pulled out the centers until I got to a point in the yarn changes where I had the same shade of blue.  Off I went on the sock #1 toe.

A few days later, I put sock #1 aside, out of sight in the main project bag, picked up cake #2 and started on the toe of sock #2.

Last night I decided to compare sock #1 and sock #2 to see how well I had matched up the stripes again, because I'm very good at starting up the socks at the same color and I was ready to admire my latest stripe success.

EPIC SOCK STRIPE FAIL.

A few minutes of tinking later and I'm back here tonight starting sock #2, this time at the correct shade of Caribbean blue.

I STILL do not have my second set of sock needles so I consider this a blessing in disguise.  Now I have something to do on the train again.

Time to re-knit sock #2.  This should last me for a few days while I wait impatiently for my new needles.

Design Features

Back when I worked in software (shudder) for hours and hours a week, there was a thing that happened all the time called problems, errors, f-ups, mistakes or whatever you want to call it.  In other words, you put in some code, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.  Sometimes it did something with the product that was FAR from what it was supposed to be doing.  If it didn't work, you crawled back into your cubicle and spent day and night trying to fix it.  If the program still worked, it was called a "Design Feature".  Especially if you were before the customer and had no time to change anything.

I was never a coder or programmer, but I did work closely with them.

Things rubbed off.

When it comes to knitting I now occasionally experience "Pattern Enhancements".

Let me just say that it is extremely easy for me to live with Pattern Enhancements, so it is rare that I actually tink something just for a mistake on one or two stitches.  I'll tink it because I don't like it or I have become bored with it, or because I MAJORLY f'd up, but not because there is a small mistake.

That being said, I've used this same pattern for every pair of socks I've knit.  I've read and re-read the heel part of the pattern several times over immediately before execution and have knitted this same heel about 16 times now.  I think every heel I've done is different.  Seriously.  It's not really anything that messes up the heel and they pretty much all look the same, it's just for some reason I interpret the pattern differently every time I make a heel.  A stitch more here, one less there, a purl instead of a knit, a knit instead of a purl, a turn instead of a wrap and turn, and so on, just one stitch here or there that is wrong.  When it's all said and done I always end up with the correct amount of stitches in each section and no holes, so I don't really worry about it too much.

Why am I babbling on about this now?  Well, the foot portions on both Marine Life socks are complete and it's time to execute my cunning plan of working both heels at the same time.  Time to see if this pair ends up with any "Pattern Enhancements".  They should at least be the same - in theory.

My second set of dpn's should arrive tomorrow.  Once I get both socks on the needles, I'll take a photo.