Here’s the annoying part about being a knitter:  When people learn about your hobby, they all want knitted things for their birthday/Christmas/Arbor Day.

And here’s the sick part about being a knitter:  You want to make stuff for everyone.

For example,  my father-in-law is notoriously hard to find gifts for, so when he mentioned to me that all he wanted for Christmas was a pair of hand-knit socks each year, I couldn’t help but oblige!  I even had a pair of fairly large manly-looking socks in my stash of finished projects in a lovely burgundy-brown color.  Easy-peasy!

He loved them, and wore them the rest of Christmas break (which made me very happy-it’s always great to see your work being appreciated).  But there was a problem:  They were WAY too small.

Not too small that he couldn’t get the socks on or anything, but my knitter’s eye couldn’t help but notice that the sock was pulling across the ball of the foot and the heel was much too close to the toe.

It drove me nuts!  I pulled out a couple skeins of sock yarn from my suitcase and started working on next year’s Christmas Socks then and there (what?  Don’t tell me I’m the only one that travels with a selection of yarns and needles.).

Unfortunately, these socks are slow going, for many reasons.  First off, I kind of forgot about them for a while and they hid somewhere in my knitting studio.  Second, I’ve been crazy busy with a bunch of pattern writing and haven’t had time to finish these guys.

But most of all, these socks are annoyingly large.  A few extra stitches per row and several inches longer than my standard socks.  And, I picked a cool-looking, but annoyingly complicated basket-weave stitch.  It all adds up to very slow going,

Ugh.

Oh well, at least I have 5 more months to finish them!