Hubris

It turns out that if I was half as smart as I thought I was, I'd be twice as smart as I actually am.  Huh?  Yah, I know. 

I have knit a gazillion pairs of socks in the last five or so years. Okay, maybe not a gazillion pairs, but easily two dozen pairs. When it gets cold, I can go two weeks in hand knit sock and not have to wash any. I've done toe up, I've done cuff down, I've done funky Cat Bordhi style, I've done heel flaps and short row heels. Hell, I have cut socks in half and ripped out the middle when they were too big. Which I suppose is why after a quick skimming of the Turkish Bed Sock patter, I dove in and didn't look back. When I couldn't make the pattern work, I search high and low for errata. It wasn't out there. Only when I tried to solve the problem on my own did I think that perhaps I was intuiting a wee smidge too much. And it was on this, my third attempt, that I realized that one of my many issues was that I was knitting in the round and NO WHERE in the directions was I told to do so. Whoops.

In a normal person this type of fatal error would act as a reminder to READ THE PATTERN, not even closely, just you know READ IT.  But, well, I have never claimed normalcy. And I didn't read the pattern, closely, or otherwise.  Which is why when I got to the foot part of the first sock (which had a few "tweeks" to make it work), I realized that my knitting was aligned backwards.  I decided to ignore it, assumed my second sock would have the same directional issues, finished the sock, tried it on with mediocre results, assumed mediocre results were due to my lack of clogs, and started the second sock.
And well then ... hello there instructions!  For some reason when I skimmed the instructions for the second sock some light bulb went off in the deep recesses of my brain and I realized a few things.  Like that one of my MANY problems was due to my inability to follow instructions for the FIRST THREE ROWS.  Was that a communal groan?  It should be.  So, I (mostly) followed the directions for the second sock and now have two socks that are more like kissing cousins that twins (of the fraternal or identical variety). The big differences are in how the top part of the sock fits which means that the first one, it doesn't fit so well and shloops down into a funky heel thing.  What you ask, well this:

The sock on the right is the dud.  So now I have a conundrum.  What to do? If there was no seaming in the sock (let alone two seams and a kitchner), this wouldn't be a post as I would have ripped out that first sock and been on my way ... again.  But there is seaming and I hate ripping our seaming, sooooo, I am not sure what my next step will be.  I think I have enough yarn left over that I am toying with the idea of knitting a third top part and then cutting the top (and seamed bits off) and somehow sticking them all back together.  This may be too grandiose of a plan.

Perhaps I should just buy the stupid clogs.  I'd like to think that if the socks were in the clogs then their reality would miraculously converge with their intent and BAM, I'd be in business with my new socks.  But then again, if I was half as smart as I think I am ...