To Match or Not To Match

Last year, while at the NY State Sheep and Wool Festival, I purchased some yarn for these really awesome socks.  They would start out pink, then get some gray dots.  Then more gray dots.  Then tons of gray dots.  Then it would be more gray with lots of pink dots.  Then fewer pink dots.  Then all gray.  It looked like pixels.  Really neat looking, going from light to dark.  So, a year later, and one week before the next festival (where I will probably find more sock yarn, which I need more of like a need another hole in the head), I decided to start them.  Here is what they look like:

Now, I'm usually not very fussy about making my socks be all matchy matchy.  I actually like it when the stripes on one sock are in a different order than the stripes on the other.  I'm not an orderly kind of girl (in many facets of my life...).  But, for these, it's different.  I'm not sure why I'm stuck on them matching.   I imagined that they would match because I imagined that's how they dyed and split up the yarn.  AND THEY DON'T MATCH!   A closer look is in order.  The one on the right looks like this:

Starts with pink, then gray dots start 3/4 way
down the ribbing.

The one on the right looks like this:

You can't see them, but the dots JUST started,
1" into the leg....

 AND, looking at the first picture, you can see the one on the left has more pink yarn to go through before it would match the one on the right - which it won't because the other one is well on it's way and won't just stop where it is and wait for the other one. AND, i just now noticed after looking closer at the picture... THE BALL ON THE RIGHT IS BIGGER!!!!  Who knows how this saga will turn out?  I can tell you this much, there is no way I'm ripping out the one on the left to try to make it match.  I will live with it, even though I'm aggravated by it.  BUT, if I run out of yarn for the one on the left.....!?!?!? (stay tuned...)

In the meantime, I picked up my Harumi cardi this week, which I started June 11, 2011, and put a few rows on it:

 Not very far into it, but it was next on my list to finish.  I love the look of it.  Here is a picture from the pattern notes:

  I think it will be very comfy.  I'm making it with a dk weight cotton/nylon blend called Cascade Cotton Rich so it won't be terribly hot.

And I finished my basic socks with the Malabrigo sock yarn:

 Very comfy and cozy.  And now the weather is getting chilly and I can actually wear them!

Ooh, and look what I made in TWO HOURS!!!!!:

 It's a Yarn Bowl  - you put your ball of yarn in it so it won't flop all around when you are pulling the yarn from it.  It just needs a little clasp-y thingy to hold that opening shut (just above where the yarn will come out, to hold the strand of yarn in one spot. (Got the clasp at JoAnn's today.  Any bets on how long it will take me to put it on?  Hint:  Clasps are like buttons.)

And, on the homefront, this has become the norm:

Including Phoebe's paw flopped over the edge.  How nice that they can share.