Buh-Bye, Bears Socks!

I've been knitting this sock with the intent to give a pair to my dad, a big Bears fan. The cuff made me happy because it wasn't a barberpole but a cool speckly pattern. And then I switched to straight stockinette for the leg, and poof! Like magic, it barberpoles. Or maybe that ain't magic so much as a curse. Because with me at the needles, you know this will never come out right.

Sure enough, every 3/4 inch or so, the barberpole cuts back in on itself and kills the spiral pattern. Curse? Totally in effect.

And all I could think was, oh no, not again.

I tried to make myself think other things. Really tried. Things such as, Maybe he'll like it. Or, It doesn't look *that* much like Cincinnati Bengals stripes. Or, Who says socks have to match anyway. (That final thought springs from my dead certainty that no matter what I do, the second sock will never match the first until I've knit it and frogged it a dozen times and absolutely abandoned hope of a good outcome. Curse of the barberpole and all that.)

I showed the sock to lots and lots of knitters in the hope that one of them would say something to convince me that everything would be okay. Most of them were sort of baffled, I think, by the intensely emotional way I shook my sock under their noses.

"Do you see this? Do you?" I would grit out from between clenched teeth while I tried to keep my eyes from popping clean out of my face from the stress.

"Um. Uh. Yeah. Lookit that," would be the response, accompanied by puzzled frowns and the sudden realization that they were late for something, anything, somewhere far away from me and my sock.

Some of them -- familiar with the profound curse I labor under, witnesses to the insanity provoked by other barberpole misadventures -- would try to soothe me.

"Don't worry," they would say. "It can't happen again. It just can't. Nobody's luck is that bad."

Ha. Yeah, right.

The sock has been frogged. Eventually, it will become a clapotis for my mother, who sometimes accompanies my dad to the home games. It's great yarn, really it is, and she'll enjoy the scarf it will make. Plus, like most of us, she has only the one neck, so I won't have to worry about knitting a second scarf to match the first.

This is a great relief. I feel liberated. But do you want to hear the real shocker?

This means I only have one pair of socks OTN. And :::drumroll::: all but one of my UFOctober goals have been met. That last lingering goal? All I will say is -- watch out, crapghan. You're next.

...edited to note that this post was written last week, but due to technical errors and time constraints, I couldn't get the damn thing to actually post before now...