At some point after the Sock Wars, but not directly related to them, I found a bag of sock yarn I bought a million years ago in Vermont. For values of a million years ago that are “before I was ever even pregnant with Rio”. A geologic age ago when Ian was a cute tow-headed kid who liked to knit, and we had a plan to make socks together.
A plan that never came to fruition because I fell down the rabbit hole into motherhood and suddenly Rio is almost five and that bag of sock yarn is still at the back of my closet. In a neat little bag with a sock pattern and a set of double-pointed needles.
Generally, I love knitting because it looks incredibly hard and is actually dead simple. I can knock out a cable-knit scarf and collect big oohs and ahs, but it’s no harder than tying my shoes. No harder than tying my shoes a few hundred times in a row, which can get tedious but is in no way difficult.
Socks, it turns out, are not that way. Socks look dreadfully difficult to make because they are dreadfully difficult to make. I had to knit this one about half a dozen times before I got it right.
Very early in the process, Rio caught me at it and asked if she could have that sock. Conveniently, I was making it for her, in her size. She found this news staggering. Every night since, she’s had a little ritual where she comes and sits on my rocker and tries on her unfinished sock by sliding her foot between the needles oh-so-carefully. I’d hold her on my lap, and we’d both see how the sock had grown.
When I finally finished the sock, her little face filled with wonder. She wore her new sock (and only her new sock) to sleep in that night. I may never see it again, but I’m hard at work on its mate.
Related posts:
