second sock syndrome

I chose a pair of socks as my Olympic challenge because socks have notoriously been impossible for me to finish. “Second sock syndrome,” as it is called, is a huge, huuuuge problem for me.

And even though I finished my first sock on Sunday night, and I adore it, [oh, the love! I am infatuated with it] I lost momentum. I started thinking of ways to fiddle with the pattern. To make it different, somehow, from the first sock.

A woman on the knitty boards was working to reverse the scales on her second Pomatomus in order to create mirror image socks. The idea is darn appealing. But in order to twist the stitches back the other way, you have to basically twist the stitch twice, and I can’t even imagine how slow that would make one’s progress. Plus, sometimes getting all fancy and thinking new methods up leaves me more likely to quit—I start to doubt the plan of attack. I need to just do the pattern, get it done, and savor a finished pair.

But here’s my thought: If I do it toe-up, then the scales will go the other way!

First, I must just finish the pair. That’s my challenge. Playing around with the other sock leads only to unfinished pairs. I will resist the urge to slack! I will get it done!

This being my first very cool sock, I proudly showed it off to the boy. His reaction actually surprised me. Instead of the normal “That’s nice, hon” reaction—never super enthused—he said “Wow, that’s really cool,” and when I put it on, he commented on how the stitch pattern looks really neat and how the socks fit me so very perfectly. I got excited at the thought of making him a pair (though he’d require a much more simple sock pattern—where’s the fun in that). So I’m not entirely anti-socks, I’m just anti-second-sock.

I managed to cast on for the second one last night and got a bit of the ribbing done. I can’t help feeling a little like I’m wasting my time, though, for some reason. I think in the future I will have to do both at once.