Miracles Do Happen

This entry should be accompanied by a picture, but I was unprepared for the Miracle.

You might argue that if I was going to voluntarily bring a beautiful pair of hand-knitted socks to the intended recipient, it shouldn't be entirely unexpected that I might go home at the end of the day Sans Socks. You might point out that a knitter of even moderate intelligence could reasonably be expected to prepare for the possibility, perhaps by taking a photo of said socks prior to toting them to the recipient's house.

You might think that. But that's only because you don't understand...

I have obsessively knit socks for the last three years. Obsessive to the point where people who only see me once or twice a year are starting to discern a pattern. Obsessive to the point where people see me and *ask where the sock is* if it isn't in clear evidence. My husband puts up with the insanity because he is always living in the (occasionally fulfilled) hope that he will be gifted with the current pair-in-process. The Pirate loves him some woolly socks.

My mother, on the other hand, has consistently maintained that the socks are evidence of my increasing Loopiness (loopy, knitting, get it?) and has steadfastly resisted all of my numerous attempts to convince her that hand knit socks are acceptable footwear. The socks are too thick, they'd be too hot. You have to hand wash them, they are too much trouble. The wool is scratchy, but if mixed with anything else it's too binding or isn't sufficiently breathable. The stitches are too big, she could feel them on the bottom of her feet. The ridges along the place where I picked up the stitches from the heel flap are too noticeable, they bother her.

My mom is the Princess & the Pea of sock wearers.

I never gave up, but I did accept the unlikelihood of success.

So when I carefully chose a skein of Cherry Tree Hill Merino Supersock to fit most closely my mother's color preferences, my hopes of actually having the gift accepted were not high.

After knitting a guage swatch, I decided that it almost definitely wasn't soft enough. I tried hard, but couldn't get the ridges off the heel flap quite flat enough. Just In Case, I knitted the socks to fall between my huge foot size and my mother's small foot size, so that when she inevitably rejected the beautiful objects they could still be enjoyed by someone (me).

Maybe I could find some nice bamboo sock yarn? Does soy silk breathe?

I took the socks casually out of my knitting bag and laid them along the back of the couch while unearthing my current sock project (Trekking XL in a particularly exhuberant stripe combo of yellow, green, and gray-blue which the Pirate chose for himself during a trip to the yarn store BY HIMSELF). I told my mom that the socks were my latest finished pair, and asked what she thought of the yarn, and how well the socks fit... I *didn't* tell her that I had made them with her in mind.

SHE LIKED THEM.

She said they were pretty. She said they fit well. She said they felt fine.

So what could I do? I couldn't take them home again... she might change her mind if given the time to think about it. So I packed up the knitting bag again while casually mumbling, "They're yours," and then quickly skedaddled out the door before she could martial any arguments.

So there's no picture.

If I tried, the socks probably wouldn't show up on film anyway. Magical objects are like that...