Socks

I had a stack of half-made socks waiting for my attention for so long that I had forgotten they existed. Has that ever happened to you? Well, it happens to me with alarming regularity. So, as I say, I found this group of guilt-inducing projects and pounced on them, right ferociously I might add. Now they are Finished Objects and will never threaten my peace of mind again.

And with hands properly limbered up from sock knitting, I dug in and whipped up a pair for the 4-year-old with some of the leftovers. He is very happy about this and loves his new socks. He is looking forward to more sock booty, just as soon as possible if you please, thank you very much.

I find that the boy has some difficulty putting on his own socks if they have ribbing at the top. He is at an age where he simply must do everything By HimSelf, and so I have made his socks with the garter stitch cuff to make things easier for him.

After seeing the colorful sock yarn additions to the stash, my mother has requested another pair of socks. Which I have dutifully started knitting. I have one finished and am working on the second.

Which brings me to a dilemma. Halfway through the heel on this second sock I have realized that I am going to run out of reinforcement yarn long before I reach the toe. I have more reinforcement yarn in my stash that doesn't quite match but comes rather close.

The yarn that I'm using for toes and heels on this pair of socks is from my stash, purchased in 1990 and the yarn is hard to find anymore. I could do as Elizabeth Zimmermann suggests and use quilting thread as reinforcement, it would be easy to match the color, but the texture would not be the same.

The texture is important to Mom, and she agrees that using the off-color reinforcing yarn from stash to finish the sock is a good idea. She then went on to suggest ripping out the toe on the first sock and reknitting it with the off-color companion yarn in order to make it match the second sock.

I gave her The Look.