Requiem for a Sock
Jun. 9th, 2017 01:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stitchy_stitchyIt was 2007. The Yarn Harlot was coming to give a talk at my local public library. And I realized something, in abject horror:
I did not have a sock in progress to be photographed with her holding.
I'd never even knit a sock before, truth be told, unless you counted the giant ones I knit to felt into slippers (which I still recommend as a first sock project).
So I rushed out to the nearest yarn store - Flying Sheep, no longer in business - and bought the cheapest skein of sock yarn I could find, even though I wasn't crazy about the colors, and a set of size 2 DPNs. I cast on "Snicket Socks" because I liked the honeycomb-y cables.
When she held the sock, Yarn Harlot said I had mojo. She also identified the yarn as Plymouth Sockotta by feel. (I know now that it's one of the few sock yarns with a high cotton content, so in retrospect that's less impressive than it felt at the time.) Someone snapped our picture, and my face cropped from that picture was my Ravelry userpic for years.
The sock definitely had mojo. It never became one of my favorites, which possibly extended its lifespan, because I never did become crazy about the colors - and the honeycomb-y cables got lost in the orange-and-yellow section of the yarn. But they were my first socks.
Were, because now, ten years later, my toes have finally gotten the better of the yarn. I think that counts as a good, long life for a pair of handknit socks.
I did not have a sock in progress to be photographed with her holding.
I'd never even knit a sock before, truth be told, unless you counted the giant ones I knit to felt into slippers (which I still recommend as a first sock project).
So I rushed out to the nearest yarn store - Flying Sheep, no longer in business - and bought the cheapest skein of sock yarn I could find, even though I wasn't crazy about the colors, and a set of size 2 DPNs. I cast on "Snicket Socks" because I liked the honeycomb-y cables.
When she held the sock, Yarn Harlot said I had mojo. She also identified the yarn as Plymouth Sockotta by feel. (I know now that it's one of the few sock yarns with a high cotton content, so in retrospect that's less impressive than it felt at the time.) Someone snapped our picture, and my face cropped from that picture was my Ravelry userpic for years.
The sock definitely had mojo. It never became one of my favorites, which possibly extended its lifespan, because I never did become crazy about the colors - and the honeycomb-y cables got lost in the orange-and-yellow section of the yarn. But they were my first socks.
Were, because now, ten years later, my toes have finally gotten the better of the yarn. I think that counts as a good, long life for a pair of handknit socks.
