knit parade: sock tangent

the very first year the wife and i lived together was 13 years ago. we were in our mid-twenties. we were both still in university. we had three cats. and everything we owned was a hand-me-down.


we had just survived a very hard summer of making and losing friends. we were both still very much in the infamous closet. we had very little money. and we worked all the time. at one point, the wife even had three jobs.


our first place, just the two of us, was right in the heart of the toronto "village:" church and wellesley.  and we loved living there, in the heart of it all, protected by our community. we danced in the space we sectioned off for our living room. and in that little bachelor apartment full of melting walls and falling tiles, we found out we loved to entertain.


but as anyone who loves to entertain will attest, it can take its toll. 


one night, just minutes before friends were coming over for dinner, the wife and i had a fight. i don't remember about what, but it was probably one of our first heated arguments in that first apartment of ours. we got it together just before our guests arrived. and of course, all was well and presumably, a good time was had by all.


unfortunately, we had also done a load of laundry that day, which we completely forgot about, because of said fight. a load full of socks. for days... or even weeks we wondered where some of our favourite pairs were. 


when we finally went to the laundry room, optimistic the socks were still there, waiting ever-so-patiently for us to claim them, they were gone. and we were devastated.


you see, my wife has a thing for socks. she loves socks. and that load of socks was a collection of gifts and carefully selected impulse-buys full of brand names and special beloved designs. that load of socks was nearly our entire sock drawer. we had no money to replace the lot. and to this day, we sort of haven't recovered from the loss. (if you've ever asked me what to get the wife for a christmas or a birthday gift, and you ever wondered why my answer is always socks, now you know why.)


over a decade later, i find i am finally able to begin to redeem that moment in time because i am a knitter. and i have discovered a love for making socks.


after knitting the wife's 17th anniversary socks, i immediately cast on for my own. and when i finished my pair,  i thought i'd try and knit my grandmother a pair of socks. surely she'd appreciate them since she used to be a knitter, herself. (and if she doesn't like them, she won't tell me, so it's all good.) here they are.

yarn: spud and chloe fine

then the designer of the pattern i'd been using mentioned on her blog that she has drawer-full of hand-knit socks. and ever since i read that, i was inspired to work towards a similar goal... in lieu of all the socks we lost that-time-we-had-a-fight-right- before-our-dinner-party-oh-so-long-ago.


and then the same designer decided to host a patchwork sock-a-long on ravelry using only scrap sock yarn. and... well, i couldn't resist joining. you know, because every pair of socks i knit works towards my drawer-full goal. 


anyhoo, check out my first sock entry!

isn't it crazy? i adore it. i'm usually such a colour wimp but socks are so wearable, whatever they look like, because they are easily hidden. i thought i'd just trust in the process of just putting the colours together and have fun. 

yarn: (left column, from the top) mystery yarn, koigu kppm
(right column, from the top) auracauna, knitpicks stroll handpainted, tosh sock

the yarn i used for this project are all scraps from projects past - socks i made the wife, the boy, and the girl; a sleep sack i made for the girl, her newborn hat, a failed project for the girl, and fingerless gloves for me. 

weaving the ends in were kind of a saga. but such is the small consequence of a truly unique pair of socks full of family memories, hand-knitted by me. 


surely a drawer-full of these should make up for that lost laundry load of socks, right? 





well, they better!