Socks

Many years ago, perhaps 50 or even more, I learned how to knit.  My dad's mother taught me, giving me a pattern for knitted slippers from which I knit several pairs to give as presents.  Since then I've made numerous scarves, afghans, even a couple of sweaters.  Two years ago, when I was about to head to Phoenix for e's birth, I decided to learn how to knit socks, to have a portable project to occupy my hands.  Amanda Jean Nyberg, writer of the crazymomquilts blog, offered a free sock pattern that looked doable for a beginner, so I downloaded it.  Then I stopped in at a local yarn shop, bought a skein of a lovely variegated (self-striping) blue yarn and circular needles, and cast on 60 stitches.  It took two or three tries before I moved past the first couple of rows, but finally I was on my way, knitting from the top of the cuff toward the toe.  As I sat in the NICU waiting room then at home with E, that first sock took shape.

I liked the blue striped pair so much, that when I realized there was enough yarn left to make one more sock, I went back to the yarn shop and was fortunate to find another skein of that blue.  So now I have three pairs.  I just finished my fourth pair, of pink, turquoise, purple and orange. When my sister saw me working on them, she asked if she could have them.  Yesterday I put them in the mail to her.  Now I have started the fifth pair, with muted red, blue, yellow, black flecked with metallic.  How they sparkle!  I'm not a super-fast knitter, but that's OK.  It's very rewarding to see the sock grow.  And to think it's just yarn looping in and out, almost like magic.