Ugly sock almost has a friend!

Really, it's close — under 50 rows from done, now.

I'm really getting a bout of finishitis — I don't know if it's related to convalescing, or the feeling that I get to start my life fresh when I finally heal from this thing, but the fact that I have a good dozen or so unfinished projects is starting to get to me. Of course, I have the perpetual startitis too, and there are a lot of projects I can't wait to begin, but I feel like I want to have some of the old cleared out of the way first. Plus, I'm more behind on baby gifts than I want to admit. You know you're behind when you start the gift in the 1-year-old size.

I was working on Rob's pullover on the train. I had to start completely over on the body, and I had to rip back about half, fix errors, and lengthen one of the sleeves. Then I found errors in the other sleeve (I haven't ripped back yet but I have the errors marked with stitch markers). Then I restarted the body and knit part of the colorwork.

Only problem was, I didn't have the Internet, nor did I have a primer on colorwork with me. Remember, this is my first ever colorwork, and I hadn't even completely settled on whether or not I was going to hold two yarns in my left hand or one in each (I seem to be settling on one in each). So I didn't know which hand was supposed to hold my foreground color and which was supposed to hold my background color.

I didn't feel like waiting, so I guessed. Put the foreground in the right hand and the background in the left. I knit a while. It looked suspicious, but you know how we knitters just want to keep on going, so I did. Then when I finally got to San Jose, I asked my dear friend Mary, who's a knitting expert.

"Which hand do you usually hold your yarn in?" she asked. I told her I knit Continental.

"Then I think you have it backwards," she said. And then very kindly allowed as how it would probably be fine as long as I was consistent.

I knit on. About two more rows. But it bothered me. Rob kept telling me he didn't mind, wouldn't be able to tell.

I paused.
I looked out the train window.
I took a deep breath, and ripped it all back.

I've only just finished catching up to where I was.

Before:



After:


Sorry about the color difference between the pictures — the first one is the more accurate. Anyway, hopefully you can see that the pattern is coming out slightly more defined now.

Here's the back, because people always want to see the back. I am going to great effort to try not to knit this too tightly — I'm using two circs when I could be using one, and I'm stopping and pulling now and then. It's possible I'm overcompensating, but I guess I'll find out when I block.