The blossoms continue upwards and my sour cherry tree is dancing for joy in a hoop skirt.

Meantime, my old friends Ron and Theresa at thebuffalowoolco.com have been selling the last of their bison/silk socks. They’re my husband’s One True Sock and we stocked up when they announced the cost of silk now is ending those and when they’re gone they’re gone.

But then the mill, using up the rest of the yarn, made a few more pairs.

The catch was that they were seconds.

Ron and Theresa and crew personally went over every single pair to make sure they were okay, and they were, but seconds are seconds and they knocked a chunk off the price.

When Richard opened the package yesterday (I got him something else too because socks for your birthday is officially a That Doesn’t Count gift no matter how much he likes them) it took me about a heartbeat. And then another.

Why they were seconds.

Their socks have a little bison motif knit across the toes and that motif is color-coded by size.

The XLs were yellow.

My mediums are yellow. His are supposed to be orange. It really speeds up the sock-sorting by a lot and I’ve always thought it was a nice touch on their part.

Ron confirmed it when I asked: someone at the mill had forgotten to change that yarn during the knitting.

I told him I’d laughed, because, of all the problems in the world right now? There’s more than one way to eyeball a sock size.

And I told him that surprising us with an extra pair that was bison/merino was very generous–and brilliant. Because someday my hubby will need more socks. And now he has a way to learn in advance that their other ones are great, too. But that was so unexpected and so cool to find tucked in there.

See? Socks *can* be a real gift!