Scurvy Yarn Project: Black Cabled Socks

My LYS had a sock yarn sale some time back which I took full advantage of. I purchased, among other things, several shades of tweed sock yarns by Lana Grossa, which I really like. I need black socks, so I decided to start there. I also decided, thanks to some apparent need for punishment, to incorporate some cabling into these socks. Oh, and to make the torment really medieval, I also decided to do them via the two-at-a-time method.

Yeah. Go ahead. Laugh it up.

I didn't take any pics of the first two attempts (both of which I ripped out) because the socks looked too much like a tiny bikini top. This, however, was taken as I was rewinding the yarn after the second or third failed attempt:

At least I found some small amusement; the spool edges stayed put while I was re-winding the cake

It's in a scale because after cutting off the parts that were so bad I couldn't untangle them, I needed to make sure I still had enough for the torture socks.

Here is the yarn after I'd finished, all packed up in Anti-Yarnblob Devices and ready for yet another attempt:

Anti-Yarnblob Devices provide no defense against Scurvy Yarn Projects

Here are the socks, knitted two at a time, with cabling on the tops and cuffs, shortly before I realized the cabling pulled them in so tightly I couldn't get them on:

After I ripped that attempt, I realized two things; (1) I don't have the attention span to do socks two-at-a-time (my mind tends to wander while I'm knitting; that's half the reason I do it); and (2) the gauge difference between regular in-the-round knitting and cabled in-the-round knitting is very, very important.

After that, I decided to just knit them one at a time and only do cabling on the cuffs. So far, I've gotten to the point of starting the cuff on the first sock (I knit mine from the toe up), but now I've got to rip out the two rows of cabling and the increase row because I added too many stitches:

Eventually I will get this right and finish these darned socks. No pun intended.