High Anxiety Socks

You might remember that a great many of my family took part in the SF Pride Parade this year. And it was a lot of fun!

But not completely without a downside. You see, spending a whole weekend packed with family dinners, etc., has its effect on me. And I don't mean a good effect.

And on this particular occasion, to make matters worse, my mother and my father had not previously seen each other in nearly two decades. This was not entirely by accident, either. At one of DD's toddler b-day party weekends, in fact, we went to great lengths to make sure they never met. It wasn't easy and involved some half-truths. Or white lies. Whatever. Mom just did not want to see Dad.

Not long before the weekend of the Pride Parade, I finished a pair of socks. I believe it was the Waving Lace Socks.

So the prospect of facing all this family togetherness without a sock on the needles was too much for me to bear. I had to cast on a sock, and immediately.

Lo and behold, the "High Anxiety Socks" were born. I knitted them in the car all weekend on the way to and from these various family events, which helped ease my poor nerves.



They're very matchy matchy, cuz that's the way I like them.



And just this last weekend I made myself this sock blocker:



I used this tutorial, and an inexpensive, thin plastic cutting board, one of a set of 4 that I had gotten a while back, probably from Bed, Bath & Beyond. I don't see the exact ones on their website now, but they are supposed to be color-coded to avoid cross-contamination. Something like green for veggies, yellow for chicken, red for red meat, and blue for fish. We used them for whatever, and this one has certainly had its share of use. But we didn't really need to have all 4 as cutting boards, so this one was sacrificed, because I like blue better than the other colors. Maybe I'll make mini-sock blockers for my mini-socks from the scraps.

I traced one of my socks on it, then expanded the shape to be closer to the measurements of my foot and leg. This was too big, so I made it a little smaller. It is probably still a little too big, and I might cut it down more sometime. But it doesn't matter much, as it's only for taking pix.

Sock details:

Yarn: Regia Cotton Surf, 41% superwash wool, 34% cotton, 25% polyamide, color 5416. Nice stuff, I like this blend of wool and cotton.

Pattern: Adapted from Slouch Socks in Not Just More Socks, with (guess what?!) eye-of-partridge heel flap. No surprise there.

Needles: Knitpicks 32" circ, size US 1 (2.5 mm).

Again? Sure, I like this easy pattern and this yarn.

Oh, and the family? Not too bad, actually. Let's see, my dad was his usual hyper-critical self (upon showing up unannounced at the house, first he commented that our dog was getting fat, then after listening to DD perform for him on her flute, he went over to examine her sheet music because he thought he had caught her in a mistake). Guess what? We're never asking her to play for him again. I can't believe that even the poor dog caught criticism.

And whatever the reason was that had led Mom to avoid Dad for so many years (possibly the criticisms might have had something to do with it?), she had gotten over it, and that part went fine. It was downright anticlimactic. You'd think they could have made more drama over it, for my sake, after all my anxiety.

At least I have my socks.