Friday, August 27, 2010

Hot Potato

This summer, I decided that I had had enough of my endless parade of hats and that I wanted something spicy. Browsing around the interwebs, and bookstores, I began to notice a trend. Socks were hot. And socks were hard. Among many others, the Yarn Harlot was the loudest in extolling their virtue and just how damn smart you’d feel after having finally turned a heel. And they are small, and portable.
I shrugged. “Sounds fun.” I said and dived into my stash. Interestingly enough, my stash had a decently sized collection of sock yarns tucked away, right in a corner. It was supplemented by the Opal yarn that my mom had passed onto me, after her failed attempt at knitting (more on that later). I grabbed some of the Opal (in a colorway that I would have never chosen) and some Patons Kroy in a lovely blue green colorway. I cast on the Opal, knit it up into footie socks, and they disappeared into the abyss that is my mom’s workplace. However, this is not their story (and they don’t count as real socks, since they were only footies) .

This is the story of the Patons Kroy. The colorway is titled “Cyan stripes” and they lived up to their name. I was religious and knit a gauge swatch before starting, just so that I could have a good idea of what I was getting into. Because I’m fairly lazy when it comes to gauge, and because I didn’t know just how much yarn would be enough for a pair. I had two balls of 50 grams, and my research indicated that this should be enough. Cast on for the toe was … problematic. I like DPNs. Especially for tubes like socks. Trying to do a toe with DPNs (especially when I couldn’t find a single cast on that worked for DPNs (which is frustrating)) was a challenge. I ended up saying “Screw it” and improvising. It involved less cursing that I would have thought. After the toe came easy street, knitting in the round. That was my mindless knitting and I took to it with a will. Within a couple days, I had two halves of a sock. Turning the heel wasn’t too bad, given that I had cut my teeth on the footies. It was only after I started doing the ribbing that I realized that there might be a problem.

I tried them on. They didn’t fit. “Okay.” I said, “Grandparents are coming for their vacation in a couple of days, the socks will be for grandpa.” And I happily knit on the damn ribbing which I hate quite a bit.

Grandpa came. I procrastinated. I learned that I don’t like ribbing. Eventually, I preserved and presented grandpa with a fully finished sock. It didn’t fit. Grandpa, with his feet slimmer and smaller seeming feet then mine, turned out to have rather large feet. They were too short, and the ribbing was far too tight for him to be able to wear them comfortably. Grandma took one look at the whole sorry mess and stole the socks out from under both Grandpa and me. It took me at least a week to finish the ribbing on the second sock. During that time, Grandma wandered around with only one sock on. A rather interesting phenomenon. Looking back on it now, I realize that that pair of socks has been a pair of hot potatoes, being passed on from family member to family member until they were cool enough (fit) the person they reached. And now another pair of socks is on my needles, this time for my Grandpa.