Wedding Socks
The Wedding of the Year in CR, as previously mentioned, has taken place. As both bride and groom had long-term establishments of their own (none of this living together stuff before marriage for them), it was firmly but politely suggested that presents were not expected. If people couldn't stand that, there was the liquid option: Wine? Sure. Whisky? Of course. I got around this fol-de-rol by having a brainwave about last January and actually acting on it so I was golden. Golden, that is, right up until about three weeks before the wedding when The Groom told me that he was wearing a made-to-measure kilt and The Bride said, "But he needs socks."
I laughed. (I would have laughed and laughed and laughed but it was the day after her whaddayacallit? Stagette?? Bachelorette??? It was 10 women who'd been on a boat for 3 hours leaving 10 empty champagne bottles behind and going on to dinner and further imbibements. I was feeling a touch delicate.) Yes, I knit and yes, I knit socks. Mostly on 2.25cm needles with matching size yarn and mostly while talking on the phone or reading blogs or watching British tv. Kilt Hose. Hahahahahaha!!
I got home and looked up patterns on the magicalness of Ravelry. There are a lot of pretty amazing patterns out there but here's the thing:
The Groom is 6' 4.5" tall and his legs go up to his flipping armpits!
Do you know how many miles of yarn it would take to knit him socks?? Let me put it this way: the fairly simple pattern I looked at suggested about 750 - 800m on 4mm needles. Well, that didn't seem too bad. So, with less than three weeks to go, I cast on some lovely cream wool and started knitting.
The first thing to pay attention to is that one knits an awful lot of hose as a turned over cuff. And then a lot of that is hidden under the cuff being the part of the sock that the cuff is turned over - sort of like knitting twice to get to the starting point. Now I can live with that and I can live with the mounting anxiety that knitting in the round laid flat can raise in one. Let's face it: how big around are your calf muscles? Now divide that in half and lay it flat and see if it doesn't give you pause? I knit and I knit and, by gum, the sock (note the singular) got longer and longer. By ten days before the wedding, even though I had already used up 600m of yarn, it looked like I could maybe make it. Then came the phone call.
"Sorry we haven't gotten back to you about the socks but you haven't started yet, have you?"
Pause: it is here that you need to know that The Bride really is a darling and I love her to bits but she doesn't know much about knitting. After all, she thought I could whomp up a pair of kilt hose in three weeks.
"Actually, I have, and I'm almost done one!" (slight exaggeration there but I was close to the heel and that counts as almost done. Well, I was about 3" from the heel and his foot is 10.5" long after that but it was still more than half-way.)
There was a silence. Then, "What colour are they?" I wonder if this is a trick question. "Because The Groom can get white socks when he picks up the kilt but he really wants green."
Green. Green? Gentle Reader: Take a few minutes and entertain yourself by looking at all the different colours of green you can see just from where you are sitting!!! My mind started to scrabble: I could dye them, right? with KoolAid, right? and get the correct colour the one that would exactly match the one in his kilt which would need to be an exact match because although lovely in so many ways he is a bit of a stickler for things like that, I could do that, right???
So I have one kilt sock mostly made because I am stubborn like that and I decided I needed to make a prototype anyways (most people call it swatching but we all know swatches lie). On their way to the airport, the newlyweds stopped in for a quick visit and The Groom obligingly put on the sock.
It is
too
damn
big!
At least I didn't knit two of them and he didn't have to not wear them for his wedding.
And I'm golden for Christmas knitting - as long as I can figure out what colour green he really wants.
Still breathing
I laughed. (I would have laughed and laughed and laughed but it was the day after her whaddayacallit? Stagette?? Bachelorette??? It was 10 women who'd been on a boat for 3 hours leaving 10 empty champagne bottles behind and going on to dinner and further imbibements. I was feeling a touch delicate.) Yes, I knit and yes, I knit socks. Mostly on 2.25cm needles with matching size yarn and mostly while talking on the phone or reading blogs or watching British tv. Kilt Hose. Hahahahahaha!!
I got home and looked up patterns on the magicalness of Ravelry. There are a lot of pretty amazing patterns out there but here's the thing:
The Groom is 6' 4.5" tall and his legs go up to his flipping armpits!
Do you know how many miles of yarn it would take to knit him socks?? Let me put it this way: the fairly simple pattern I looked at suggested about 750 - 800m on 4mm needles. Well, that didn't seem too bad. So, with less than three weeks to go, I cast on some lovely cream wool and started knitting.
The first thing to pay attention to is that one knits an awful lot of hose as a turned over cuff. And then a lot of that is hidden under the cuff being the part of the sock that the cuff is turned over - sort of like knitting twice to get to the starting point. Now I can live with that and I can live with the mounting anxiety that knitting in the round laid flat can raise in one. Let's face it: how big around are your calf muscles? Now divide that in half and lay it flat and see if it doesn't give you pause? I knit and I knit and, by gum, the sock (note the singular) got longer and longer. By ten days before the wedding, even though I had already used up 600m of yarn, it looked like I could maybe make it. Then came the phone call.
"Sorry we haven't gotten back to you about the socks but you haven't started yet, have you?"
Pause: it is here that you need to know that The Bride really is a darling and I love her to bits but she doesn't know much about knitting. After all, she thought I could whomp up a pair of kilt hose in three weeks.
"Actually, I have, and I'm almost done one!" (slight exaggeration there but I was close to the heel and that counts as almost done. Well, I was about 3" from the heel and his foot is 10.5" long after that but it was still more than half-way.)
There was a silence. Then, "What colour are they?" I wonder if this is a trick question. "Because The Groom can get white socks when he picks up the kilt but he really wants green."
Green. Green? Gentle Reader: Take a few minutes and entertain yourself by looking at all the different colours of green you can see just from where you are sitting!!! My mind started to scrabble: I could dye them, right? with KoolAid, right? and get the correct colour the one that would exactly match the one in his kilt which would need to be an exact match because although lovely in so many ways he is a bit of a stickler for things like that, I could do that, right???
So I have one kilt sock mostly made because I am stubborn like that and I decided I needed to make a prototype anyways (most people call it swatching but we all know swatches lie). On their way to the airport, the newlyweds stopped in for a quick visit and The Groom obligingly put on the sock.
It is
too
damn
big!
At least I didn't knit two of them and he didn't have to not wear them for his wedding.
And I'm golden for Christmas knitting - as long as I can figure out what colour green he really wants.
Still breathing
posted by Another Joan at 7:17 p.m.
1 Comments:
Oh goodness.
I had something like that once: I offered to make someone (a knitter, yet!) something, and she kept changing her mind on what she wanted. The third time I just started in white and figured I could dye it later--so when she changed her mind yet again, no sweat.
I'd never dyed a finished shawl before. I tried to kind of throw it in the pot so the dye would hit all of it at once. Splashed boiling dyebath on me, got one side slightly darker than the other, and had to run it through clear boiling water after clear boiling water to try to even it out (which helped a lot).
That was my one and only time for knitting for someone with changeable mindsettings on such things. It seems to me we each get a chance to be a saint on such things at some point, but for me I'm limiting it to once.
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