FO: vanilla latte socks

So I shared about these socks over on Instagram last week, but the story really is just too good, and I thought I would post about it here as well:

This spring, I made myself a pair of vanilla latte socks. I had a skein of Madeline Tosh sock in the cove colorway, from a project that I frogged several months before and it really seemed a shame not to try making socks from it. I cast these on back in March and worked on them mostly in the last weeks before Caleb was born. They were the perfect mindless knitting project- easy, but interesting enough thanks to the beautiful tonals in the wool. 

Something funny happened along the way, however. I cast off the first sock shortly before my sisters came to visit me back at the end of April and took a break from the project while they were here. Two weeks later I cast on the second sock and was happily knitting away when I noticed that it seemed to be knitting up quite a bit smaller than the first one. Here's a photo of both socks in progress from instagram:

Anyhow, this had me majorly confused. I kept comparing the two socks to each other and was completely mystified that the width could be so different when I had the same number of stitches, using the same needles & wool. But I continued anyhow, and finished my second sock about a week before C was born. I then put my socks in the cupboard along with my other pairs of handknit socks and forgot about them. 

About a month and a half later, I pulled them out to show my mom the pattern, as she was looking for some ideas to make knitting vanilla socks a little more exciting. I wanted to suggest this pattern along with a few of my other favorites (Hermione's Everyday socks & the blueberry waffle sock pattern to be exact..) I was absolutely shocked by what I found: 

The photo basically speaks for itself but I used two COMPLETELY different patterns on these socks. The first one (on the left) is the vanilla latte sock pattern. The second is something that I apparently made up. It's similar enough- garter stitch rib, but the numbers are completely different, and the result is a much smaller, tighter sock. 

Now, I assure you, I had ample opportunity to notice this, as like I said, I kept taking the first sock out to compare with the second as I was knitting, and spent many a moment pondering what could be going wrong with my gauge. Major pregnancy brain moment!

At first, I was thinking about unpicking one of them to get a matching pair and posted over on Instagram to get your advice on which one I should keep. The response was overwhelming- almost everyone advised me to keep both socks as they are, as a memory in years to come. 

So I decided to take your advice- both because I like the idea of having this memory, but also because it meant that I could already cast on my next pair of socks, which, I assure you, I wasted no time in doing.