Would you, could you, in a box?

Here, scrunched up on the scanner bed as if jammed in an invisible box like a mime, is my nearly-done first Waving Lace Sock:



It looks much better on, and I don't think it looks half bad here. I love this sock. This is going to be the best-looking sock I have made yet, if I do say so myself.

Last week was Crazy Week at our house, but I didn't read the memo announcing that until late the week before. I looked at my calendar -- meetings or school concert every night, followed by a weekend of camping with the Girl Scouts. Yikes!

Well, we got through it all just fine and while there's still some clean-up yet to do from the camping trip, everything went great.

I nearly had to cancel this camping trip. Four girls were going, and the parents of the other 3 girls (and my DH) all had obligations that prevented them from coming. I needed another adult to go. Not just because this is the GS safety rule and generally a good idea -- but I couldn't even get the girls and our stuff there by myself, even in our SUV. There's just a leetle too much stuff involved in cooking and camping the GS way, sometimes.

We were rescued at the last moment by the leader of another Troop. Her girls are older and don't like to camp so much any more. She misses it. She was happy to come along. Yay, Lorri!

Lorri saw me knitting this sock while we were there and admired it greatly. She even offered to pay me to knit her socks like this. I was very flattered, but politely declined -- that would take all of the fun out of it, I said.

Later I thought through the math -- thanks to the Sock-in-a-Day Challenge, I now know that it take me about 13 hours to knit a single sock. That would make 26 hours for a pair, since I know for a fact that Lorri has the full complement of two feet. Let's say, just for grins, that I would knit these socks for $10 an hour. (Let's not drag my day job and what that pays into this, that doesn't really have much bearing.) The yarn cost about $20. Let's see, $20 for materials, plus $10 an hour times 26 hours = $280. What?!! No one in their right mind would pay that for a pair of socks! Not, I have to say, even for socks as beauteous as these are going to be.

Would you knit socks for pay? And if you would, how much would you charge? What about sweaters? Hats? Scarves? Face it, any of these things we knit can be bought for less than we make them for (if we disregard their unique character and craftsmanship for a moment), and when you cay buy socks for a few dollars or less, why would anyone pay hundreds?

On the other hand, Lorri did save this trip in a very real sense. And I think the time may well come when I would happily knit her a pair of socks as a gift. Because that is a different matter entirely. Don't you think?