(Not Feeling the Sock) Love Thursday

(First, in another Not Feeling the Love Thursday Moment: I really want to scream that my freaking computer cannot remember me and log me in automatically to Blogger.com. I check the freaking box, dammit (there goes my R rating) and I expect to be remembered! How hard IS it? I have Cookies enabled, dammit, (another rating gone) remember me!)

There's a tradition in the blogosphere that's almost a year old (can it be a tradition if it's not even a year old?) of calling every Thursday, "Love Thursday." People are expected to post loving entries on their blogs and loving pictures of themselves doing loving things.

In theory, I support this. There is far too much divisiveness in the world and having one day a week dedicated to sending out Love vibes can't be a bad thing.

However, what usually happens to me --and I'm sure this is why Love Thursdays were born because maybe it happens to everyone --is that I tend to hit the peak of my crankiness on Thursday. It's not quite the weekend, my house has crossed over from the first half of the week when the housekeeper's presence can still be felt to totally being in need of a nice vacuuming, the dog has usually chosen Wednesday night to show that she's not got the iron bowels she used to have (and why always the really good woolen rug in the Living Room? Why?), if my husband is traveling, he usually comes home on Thursday night and so I come face-to-face with the idea that I haven't lost thirty pounds in the time that he was gone (or even, you know, one pound) --it's just usually the culmination of all things frustrating.

In all honesty, I've actually been sulking since LAST Thursday over THIS:


I finished the first of my husband's hand-knitted socks. You know, the ones I wanted to be completely perfect because they would be his introduction into hand-knitted socks?? I mean, there is nothing like a hand-knitted sock.

That fits.

Therein lies the rub, of course.

It doesn't fit him.

Apparently, I neglected to factor in something called negative ease.

Negative Freaking Ease.

I don't even know what that is but I hate it.

So I sulked for a while and then decided to realign my sockic Karma by knitting a pair of socks really, really fast for my younger daughter.

So it was 40 stitches versus the 84 for my husband's sock.

And then I didn't do anything complicated. I just knitted and knitted and knitted until I had a sock.

Oh, and I tried it on her as I went. That might be a key thing--although I will tell you that I tried my husband's sock on him all through the process of knitting it, too. I KNEW it was too big. And still I finished it.

I don't know what I was thinking. I was just thinking that... something would happen. Aliens would make a sock switch! Something would intervene--maybe a burglar would break in and STEAL the sock. Or even better, a KNITTING burglar would break in, see that the sock was woefully too big for a human foot and reknit it right there on the spot!

Nope.

It's just gi-normous. No way around it. I knitted it with my eyes open.

So, I knitted Jane a sock--in one day. Pretty impressive, for me. She loved the first one so much that she wore it, all by itself, with her sandals.

Then I finished the other one. She was so happy!


I knitted them with Cascade Fixation yarn which is this brilliant cotton yarn that has about one percent elastic in it. It's perfect.

So, then I immediately cast on a pair for Ana that I hope to finish tomorrow.


The other thing I did was give away my beautiful bamboo stitch socks that I knitted in that beautiful Claudia hand painted wool yarn. I gave them to my friend Sarah and let me tell you, she had exactly the right reaction to hand-knitted socks. It's like a million degrees here in Austin and she wore them home with her sandals. I will be making her socks until she begs me to stop.

At any rate, after I have finished Ana's Quick Socks, I am going to tackle knitting another sock for my husband. I'm not sure if it will be from the same wool or from something different that I pick up tomorrow when our summer baby sitter and I are going to Hill Country Weavers for an Outing. (As in, I will be Outed as a serious yarn hoarder.)

I guess it really is Love Thursday. I love knitting socks. I truly love it. I can't EXPLAIN it or anything. But I just love it.

As for the first huge sock for my hubby? I'm either going to knit a second one and give them away as a pair to some giant-footed person OR I might use it as a Christmas stocking.