But didn’t I tell them? Lace shawls, sure. But socks? I don’t knit socks. I have quite a few pairs of handknit socks, thanks to Jasmin, Deb and Kate, Niki, Bonnie, Michelle, Chris, and my daughter Sam has a pair from Judy Sumner that turned out to be just her size. My longtime readers know that I wore mine every day at Stanford this year as a way of declaring, I am loved.
But me? I do not knit them here or there, I do not knit them anywhere. Not in a house, not with a mouse, not on a train, not in a tree, my hands don’t like them, Nancy, see?
That package that arrived last week from some Sock Summiteers, had, as I mentioned, a hank of Blue Moon SockGate sock yarn in the colors of the logo of the Summit that was going on while I was holed up in the hospital. A yarn with a good firm twist for holding up well under heel and toe–cushy for a foot, not so much so for, say, a shawl. It was adamant about what it wanted to be when it grew up.
I looked at it and thought, it could make a cool hat for some guy sometime…
Wait. Would I knit a hat on the size needles that stuff would require? For anybody? No matter how much I loved them? When I could make one in a third the time with something else?
No.
I noticed that there not only was no return address on the envelope, the thing had been auto-stamped in such a way that it didn’t even say what town it had been shipped from, fer cryin’ out loud–if I wanted to surprise Nancy back, much less the others, with something finished from that yarn? Dude. Totally out of luck.
She/they wanted me to make myself a pair of Sock Summit socks to match the t-shirt and did a good job of reinforcing the point.
But I don’t knit socks. I can, I have, I don’t, the needles are too small, I drop too many stitches, blahblahblah.
I am wearing the shirt.
I still won’t take them here or there, I’ll still drop stitches everywhere. But I do, I DO like knitting socks!
And quite honestly, I would never have sat down with a porcupine scaffolding of size 1s if it hadn’t been for the happy peer pressure of that package:Â I have some designated blue-and-purple yarn of at least two or three years’ standing in my stash to prove it.
I am having the time of my life watching this first one coming to be and I’m really hoping to show off the pair at Purlescence on Thursday. You guys go give each other a big hug from me, y’hear? You have SO earned it! I can’t wait!