Aran Sandal Socks

Sadly, very sadly, I frogged the Aran Sandal Sock yesterday. *holds moment of silence*

It wasn’t the sock’s fault, nor the patterns, nor the knitter’s (aka me). It was the colour’s fault (plz2b not pointing out that choice of colour was down to knitter, kthnx muchly). Things were going along just fine, except for when I wasn’t paying attention which resulted in much tinking, and I kept thinking “soon I’ll be able to see the pattern”. Unfortunately/fortunately, I realized that I wasn’t seeing the pattern, not because it wasn’t there, but because the yarn is just too dark. I thought about it a while and realized that it would be silly to revert to Denial and continue knitting a complicated pattern that no one will ever really see and ergo couldn’t appreciate, so I frogged. - I assure you, this decision had nothing at all to do with the fact that I completely forgot all but one of the cable twists in one panel and would have had to frog to redo them anyway. Nothing at all. *innocent whistling ensues*

Again not wanting to do the 9 to 5 pattern again, or to spend time looking for, working on, and knitting another pattern that would never really be seen, I decided to ditch the fancy socks and just frogged back to the 2x2 ribbed cuff and started knitting again. I’ve thrown in a p2, twisted stitch, p2, cable panel (p2, k1tbl, p2, k6 (cable), p2, k1tbl, p2) on both sides just to make it more interesting. I have to say, it looks a lot better, even if it is simple. At least you can appreciate the pattern, such as it is. The only thing is that I realized this morning that there is an inherent design rule in sock creation. Never place your pattern in the middle of the socks. I knit on 2 circulars and putting the cable exactly in the middle means that it would technically continue down the heal and the front of the sock. I’m going to have to do some creative turning to get the cables on the sides of the socks. Should be doable, just needs a cunning plan, and I think I have just the thing. I also just realized that the sock now looks more like a man's sock. Oh well, suck it up Grandma, they're warm.

So, the new dilemma is that I really, really want to knit the aran socks (for me this time). This in itself if not a problem; it’s the yarn. You see, I have enough sock yarn to make more than enough socks. We shall not go into this here as it is an embarrassingly large number. (Hi, my name is Melinda and I’m addicted to sock yarn.) However, I don’t have any yarn that would suit the pattern and I really, really need to curb my spending. Any other knitter will understand my anguish. How long do you think I’ll hold out?