Crossfire

Yesterday I received an email warning me of my imminent Sock Wars death. Fortunately, the weapons of death were only just then being delivered to the Post Office and I had my own weapon socks knit to just before the toe. My only goal for Sock Wars was to take someone out before I was assassinated and it looks like I'll be able to do that, but it didn't come without a price.

Having stopped knitting the night before just prior to the toe decreases I thought I would be in decent shape. Unfortunately, I misread the pattern when I jumped in to finish them quickly. Although I kept double-checking for the remaining length stopping point, I missed that there were two directions before decreasing for the toe:

Work even-30 instep sts in patt and 34 sole sts in St st - until... aprox 2.5" less than desired length...

then later:

Work in St st until foot measures... approx 2" less than desired length.

Since I'm used to patterns that only have one step near the end, I somehow missed that there were two and followed the first until 2" from the end. Then, fearing a misfire if I left it in the incorrect state, I ripped back to the 2.5" remaining point and started over. And then I was up until 1 AM before I finally finished the toes. Not so quickly after all.

But now they're done (to my satisfaction at least). And if there are any mistakes remaining that are worthy of a misfire they'll be a problem for my assassin and not me. So, it worked out perfectly -- I was killed quickly, but my efforts to knit more quickly than usual weren't wasted because I'll still get to fire my weapon socks before I'm hit AND I'll be dead before I head out of town next week so that I can relax on my vacation without thinking about socks of doom. Ah, the sweet release of sock death.

But to my fellow ludistitchers, may you knit with superhuman speed and may your assassins be slow and hampered by many mistakes so that you live to be the Last Knitter Standing!