Three Makes a Pair?

Yes, in this case, three does make a pair.  I was trying to make the second pair of socks for Kim.  The first sock just was not meant to be from the very beginning.  I tried to start on a day when I had far too many interruptions and had way too many blood pressure raising issues.  It only took me seven hours to get the first three rounds done.  I had to keep putting it down and attending to something else, and when I came back to it, I inevitably would make some kind of mistake and have to take it out and start over.  I continued to work on the sock the next day, and I thought I was making great progress. NOT! My first mistake occurred when I was starting to do the foot.  I had the whole leg and heel sections completed and had reconnected the heel to the rest of the sock with the gusset.  I was supposed to decrease two stitches every other round for the instep, but I forgot what I was doing and started to decrease four stitches every other round like for the toe. I had gone from the heel to the toe, with no foot in between.  Talk about a short sock.  I realized what I was doing, but I had to take out everything back to where I tied in with the gusset.  I thought I could live with the look of the stitches where I had to pick up to restart.  It is so hard to pick up sock yarn without it showing at least a little bit.  I continued on and finished the rest of the sock.  When I got finished, it was too short. The reason being is because I was trying to decrease the width of the sock, but keep the length the same.  To do this, I decreased the number of stitches per round by four.  I thought that I could just continue to knit the same number of rounds as the last pair of socks and the length would be the same.  What I didn't take into consideration is the number of rounds it took to complete the decreases.  It took less rounds to complete the decreases; therefore, shorter sock.  Anyway, I had to take out the stitches back to where I started the toe and add a few more rounds.  I figured it should be four, but I did five to be sure it would be long enough. It was great, the sock now was long enough after I once again finished the sock.  However, I could not live with the look of the sock because of the places where I had to pick up stitches.  I decided to make the second sock of the pair and then make my decision about what to do with the first one.  After the second sock was finished, I decided that I could not give such poor quality work to anyone, especially to one who was paying me to do it for them.  That is when I chose to knit a third sock and make it a pair of three socks. Kim can decide what she wants to do with the third sock.

Three socks make a pair.

This shows how poorly it looks where I had to pick up my stitches in the middle of the gray.  I really don't like it at all. It really looks worse to me in real even than in the picture. Thus, it warranted making the third sock, which went well and looks good. I'm glad I took the extra time and effort to make a nice looking pair of socks.

Now that the socks are finished, I will get back to knitting the Noah's Ark play mat.  There is still plenty of work to do with that.