Breaking news: almost isn't enough in knitting

Thursday is my day off so naturally, it's always packed with errands.  But I tossed all of last Thursday's to the wind (except for the pair of boots in my hand, which I rushed to the cash desk) when I got a text message from my best friend, Bob, to say he was in town for a meeting earlier than expected and could meet me for coffee if I could be downtown in forty minutes (downtown being thirty minutes away.)

Two thoughts:

I am so lucky to have a phone now with a texting feature I actually know how to use.

I am so lucky I had rationed a coffee day for that very day.  I still consider myself to be a Not Coffee drinker, but I've always dabbled in cafe au lait and lately I've been sneaking into Starbucks to order a latte.  Decaf though, because when you're not used to the caffeine, WHOA.

Bonus luck:

I keep a sock in my purse at all times. this proved to be almost as important as keeping subway tokens in my purse at all times. 

Before the post-bus subway train went into the tunnel and cut off cell phone service I even had time for enough texts to pin down exactly where we would meet.  Yay! and then I settled down to work on my purse-sock, grateful as always to know how to knit a sock without much thought any more.

Except for...

:: cue the doom music ::

exactly how many rows I like to do before turning the heel.  

That's one thing I always have to check my notes on, so upon realizing I was close to said heel I checked said notes and saw that I had scribbled in '70 rounds for Vesper' and below that, in some other ink, (72).

Riiiight.

I use the same notes for every pair of socks I knit and there was no way to know whether (72) referred to the current pair or some long-ago project. Plus I was knitting the second sock of the pair.  The first one looked like this already:

As in, pretty much done.  Could I risk a guess?

erm... no.  just didn't have it in me.

Since I was on round 67 at the time I reconciled myself and knit to 70 and put my yarn away, le sigh.

Moral of the story:

A sock in your purse doesn't guarantee you get to knit every time you sit down: planning counts.

Epilogue for the story:

It was 72 rounds, and I remember now I went up from 70 because I didn't count rounds often enough with Sock #1, went too far, and didn't feel like ripping back.

Sock #2 recovered from the hitch and looks like this now.  And you know what?  Because this is my out-in-public knitting I've discovered that everybody else thinks this is as nice a colour combo as I do.  It'll be really, really nice to get to wear them.  Think I should start keeping them home, so I finish them sooner?