Whither Thou, Reading Comprehension Skills?

The kids are at camp for 10 days, which means I had a large bloc of uninterrupted knitting time today. I put it to "good" use by knitting, frogging, tinking and ignoring pattern directions. In spite of this, I managed to finish my Fair Isle socks:

They fit well, as they should considering the amount of time that was devoted to them. I put one repeat of the pattern near the toe:

There's lots of calf shaping since they've got no give at all. I cast on 97 stitches and decreased 16 so the foot is knit with 81 stitches. I included a seam stitch because I thought it looked better.

Having finished the Fair Isle socks, I thought I'd work on these.

That didn't go well; I had to rip all the way the back to the first pattern repeat and rework the cuff. I got down to the gusset decreases and realized I didn't have enough stitches for the top of the foot, which was a pretty clear indication that I should work on something else. I settled on the Lily of the Valley scarf by Nancy Bush, which I somehow managed to cast on correctly but didn't grasp the subtle but important difference between the phrases "right side" and "wrong side" and that's how I spent an entire afternoon knitting and had less done at the end than when I started.