Socks for Nicole

You know how sometimes you give hand-knitted socks to someone and they're ho-hum about them? Or how someone might scorn the idea of hand-knitting socks at all, since you can buy them at the store?

Not Nicole.

Nicole is my neighbor and good friend. Her son is in DD's grade at school. I wish I saw her more often. We are very comfortable together and always enjoy one another's company. Once in a while one of us will call up the other and say, "we need to go for a walk right now because there is something one of us simply needs to vent about, or else explode.

I happened to mention to Nicole that I am hooked on knitting socks. That I knit more socks than I can wear myself. She promptly said, "I'd like some". In a way that I quite liked.

So after I finished my then-sock-in-progress, I rounded up all my sock yarn and most of my sock knitting books (scary, that), and all of my own hand-knitted socks, and headed over to her place (mine being full of construction dust and debris and all).

She seemed to quite understand about having so much yarn and so many books. Of course, I was offering to knit her socks, but I really think she gets it -- that if you have a hobby, of course there are shows (I told her about Stitches), and books and supplies that you collect.

She selected a yarn that I was no longer crazy about, and a simple ribbed sock was what she wanted. Perfect! I didn't steer her to these choices -- but she's not crazy about purple, so my nice hand-dyed purple yarns didn't appeal to her, and while she seemed to understand that I get all excited about things like Cat Bordhi's new sock book, she just wanted ribbed socks.



Admire our matchiness, please.




Darn! Try as we might, we can't both fit on the scanner at once.

I can't find my home-made sock blocker. The disorder caused by our remodel is staggering. I've ordered inexpensive sock "stretchers", but they're not here yet.

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O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

After writing the portion above, I had to attend to some (ahem) actual work for awhile, woe is me. Meantime, the mail came! With my sock blockers!



Yay, I have a proper portrait now! The other sock is jealous!

These sock blockers are, no kidding, $1.88, plus shipping. Go, get them here, now. With shipping, they came to $7.17. These are size small and are maybe 1/2 inch longer than my women's 7.5 foot, but that's just fine. I can't remember now where I first saw the link to these -- whoever it was that posted it, thank you, thank you! If you click the link and click on the product picture, you can see a picture without the socks on them.

They are plastic and very similar to the lovely wooden ones you see many places, but thinner. They might need just a little bit of smoothing out the edges, but otherwise they're just right for me. I know they're not as pretty, but I never could justify spending the money for the lovely wooden ones. And if DH makes me lovely wooden ones using these as a template -- well, that would be just fine and dandy, too. After the remodel is done.

OK, the details:

Lost the ball bands. Some nice self-striping and self-patterning sock yarn with nylon content.
60 stitches around on size 2.5 mm KnitPicks circ, magic loop-style. Plain heel, basic toe. 2x2 ribbing on leg and instep. Long-tail cast-on.

ETA: The link has now been fixed. Give the sock blockers a try, what have you got to lose?