This did not seem to be a good thing.
The problem, I realized, was that a head is bigger around than a foot. (This is not the "duh" moment; that comes later.) So what was supposed to be alternating pink and blue stripes on a sock turned into a pool of pink and a pool of blue, evenly divided, on the beanie.
I put the hat away for a bit. Months, actually.
When I came back to it, I saw that what made the beanie look weird was that the right half and the left half were different. What if they were the same?
I could achieve this (Duh!) by turning the hat so that the front was blue and the back was pink, or vice versa. Now the sides would match, and the pooling didn't look like a mistake.
A little symmetry goes a long way.