Commute Socks of Temporary Disappointment

What happens when I have three six-day work weeks in a row? I find myself scrambling for more brainless commute knitting and ignore everything else. Alas, brainless projects sometimes still need planning.

1. Finish knitting cowl for co-worker at a knitting party. Cast on for Commute Socks 3. Needles: US size 2, 60 sts. (Yarn: Online Supersocke 100 Comedy Color, in color no. 1282.)

2. Realize 30 minutes into 1.5-hours-each-way commute that resulting fabric isn't tight enough for hard-wearing socks.

3. Decide that socks that wear well over time is not hard to achieve with this yarn, so knitting them at a loose gauge would just be silly.

4. Ponder how personal gauge has changed over time and how the brainlessness of vanilla socks are now up in the air.

5. Decide to frog sock and restart at home on US 1 needles. Put sock away.

6. Look around train helplessly, not knowing how to occupy self on rest of commute, dreading the trip home. Play sudoku on phone in defeat.

7. Tell co-workers at work about knitting problems, and receive awkward nods in response. Remain uncertain if sock problem has been explained adequately.

8. Sit next to fellow knitter/co-worker-from-another-department/acquaintance on bus. Talk about knitting. Explain sock problem to someone who understands!

9. On train, ponder working on sock for comfort, despite frogging plans.

10. Take out sock; continue knitting.

11. Say goodbye to fellow knitter. 

12. Have stunning realization that cuffs can be obnoxiously long and loose without compromising integrity of sock.

13. At home, finish purple stripe of cuff.

14. Switch to smaller needles and increase to 76 sts.

15. Knit away.

Mad Infinity: At Least the Mistake Stitch Rib is Error-Free

Life has been obnoxiously busy recently, but I keep making tiny bits of progress in balancing household chores with my knitting life. I let myself relax for most of the evening, and I've really been enjoying cranking out a cowl design that's a commission from a coworker.

It's a sideways-knit cowl with reversible cables and lots of texture, worked in Cascade Ecological Wool held double. It's super squishy, and I'm so pumped to get this off the needles, because I've heard people (or at least Gigi of the Knitmore Girls) talk about how much this yarn fluffs up. My coworker is going to be so happy to have this, and I'm going to be so happy to make myself one out of my Rocky Coast leftovers.

However: As I said, life has been obnoxiously busy recently. So of course, what with my brain having been in high gear for a while now, now it's time to end an evening of productive knitting by dropping a cable back seven inches to fix a silly mistake.

IT MOCKS MY SUCCESS.

I'm usually confident about dropping a section down several inches, but I'm a little less sure this time. 

Points of consideration:

1. This cable is along the edge, and I'm a little less sure about what goes on mechanically at the edge of my knitting. This process of dropping down and laddering back up is harder, but... 

2. I will learn something if I do it.

3. The mistake is small: the yarn is wrapped weirdly around a correctly-crossed cable. Non-dropping fixes include: duplicate-stitch over the mistake (if I was that kind of person) and snipping the yarn and darning to prevent a hole from forming.

4. Will fixing this take longer than frogging and re-knitting? (Probably not, but you never know.)

The answer is obvious, thanks to my perfectionist tendencies. I can't duplicate stitch (because the mistake would still be there, hiding), and I don't want to darn it (weaving in more ends? NOPE/I'm already worried about having enough yardage). 

So, for the rest of the night, I'll be fixing my cable the hard way and dreaming of a January where my brain is well-rested and restricts its mistakes to fiber-free realms.