A Sock tale, in three parts.

 I have returned to knitting socks. Especially socks for the little people in my life.  Not quite frantically knitting socks, but with a great deal of enthusiasm and joy.  Why is this, you may wonder.  After 21 months, the land border with the USA is finally open!  This means that Doug and I may drive, TOGETHER, to visit my son and his family for the holidays.  My daughter-in-law may be a bit hesitant about the whole holiday hosting thing, and I hopefully have reassured her that peanut butter and jelly is fine.  I GET TO SEE, AND HUG, AND SQUEEZE them.  FINALLY!

So, this means that I need to start working on socks.  The little guys are just small, right?  I should be able to squeeze a pair of socks out of the plentiful leftovers from another pair of socks.   

When they were small, yes.  Sadly, time did not stand still and they are now 8 and 5 years old.  With feet that are correspondingly larger than in previous years.  I cast on and knit happily for the first sock.  When I reached the toe, I got a wee bit nervous and decided to just slide the stitches onto some scrap yarn “just in case” I needed to borrow some.  

Then I started the second sock.  When the yarn barf happened, I discovered just how little yarn I had left for the second sock.  Cue me scrambling around to decide what colour I wanted to use for the toes, after I have robbed Sock 1 to lengthen Sock 2 …

I have a generous ball of blue left over from the socks for the boys’ dad.  This will do nicely, I do believe.

You may notice a multitude of needle ends in the first photo.  I am still working socks on two needles.  Since my long Addi gave up the ghost, I decided to go with two circs for a while.  This technique has the advantage of not dropping needles down between the passenger seat and centre console in my car.  It is also crystal clear which stitches belong to the instep and which belong to the sole.  

The pale yarn is Superba Bamboo Superwash from Rico (50% wool, 25% polyamide and 25% bamboo viscose), and was left over from a pair of socks knit during the blog drought.  The blue is Schoppel Zauberball (75% wool and 25% nylon), also knit this year.

Funny story about the blue yarn tho.  When it was decided that the land borders would open, I immediately grabbed some sock yarn and my sock project bag.  Only to discover a complete pair of socks therein.  Now, I know we knitters can sometimes suffer from yarn blackouts.  but  I had never  heard of project blackouts!