Okay, so I know I'm new both to sock knitting and to self patterning yarns, but I somehow don't think this is supposed to happen. So there I was, happily knitting along on a pair of socks for a friend. I loved the colorway, so masculine. The stripe color order (interspersed with brown and white parts) was black, then dark gray, then light gray, then brown, as you can see here (clickable pic):
Well, I came upon a knot and decided to cut it out, but saw that further down the line there were more knots. 3 in a row, 1 right after the other. And lest you think I'm exaggerating, see for yourself here:
This knotted area also introduced a small bit of orange, a color that, as you saw, had not appeared so far. Okay, fine, I thought, I'll just cut out all 4 knots. And I did. Only to find that the stripe color order was now reversed! Now the yarn was coming off the ball in brown, then light gray, then dark gray, and then black! Am I not understanding something here? Is this supposed to be happening? Is this some common feature of self-striping yarns? What?
If it is common, I don't like it. So I wound some yarn off the main ball into a smaller ball, cut it, and started working in reverse so the stripe color order could stay the same.