Lost and Found

And now a tale of Second Sock Syndrome, with epic proportions:

Last summer, deep in the throes of book deadlines and book projects and big pulsating gobs of general book trauma, I took a mini-vacation by knitting a sock. 

It was for my mom's 78th birthday.  I knew there would only be one sock finished in time, but I also knew it wouldn't matter to her one bit.  She's the one who used to regularly give people boxes of cut pattern pieces, or piles of scraps, or skeins of yarn as presents, with the promise of completing the project in future days.  Sometimes she even did complete them, but that wasn't the point.  It was the intention that was her gift; the fact that she had taken the time to conceive of the project, with the recipient in mind.  Her five children grew up believing that a gift-wrapped intention is the better part of any gift.

And so I knitted the sock of rebelion, and gave it to Mom, to great acclaim.  She loved it.  And then I took back so that I could make it a mate at some point after the book was done.

Once the book was finished, I couldn't wait to get back to Mom's sock.  It felt like I'd heard all but the last chord of a song and if I didn't play it soon I'd have to just sit there twitching.

Except the sock was gone.  I couldn't find it anywhere.  High, Low and In Between; all the looking I could do failed to produce the sock.  I began to doubt that I had ever made it in the first place.  My disappointment was profound.  Here at last I was experiencing a sock project where I didn't feel like waiting before tackling the second sock, and I was dead in the water.  I didn't have enough yarn to start over and make three socks.  I had altered the pattern in enough subtle ways (i.e; made mistakes) on sock #1 that just jumping in on #2 would yield a mismatch (should #1 ever resurface).

So I did what any self-respecting procrastinator would: Nothing.  I worked on other things.  I designed, I wrote, I made up classes.  But I secretly could not get that missing sock out of my head. 

I realized at one point this spring that I was still trying to work in a space which had been consumed by projects from the book.  Piles of yarn, ball bands, needles, reference books; all loosely grouped by project, had completely taken over the ground floor of my house.  Hard to believe that nobody in my family ever complained, but there you have it: they are not the most Notice-y bunch.  I finally cleared the decks.  And moved the furniture.  And found the sock.

So a whole year later, I found myself visiting my mom on her birthday, and I made the second sock.  For her 79th birthday. 
 

All's Well That Ends.  And of course, Mom had no memory of the first sock from last year. 

Pattern:        "Clover", by Kate Blackburn CLICK HERE
Yarn:             Simply Socks Yarn Company in "Cornflower" CLICK HERE
Motivation:    Only when a thing becomes impossible, do I really feel like doing it.

I have GOT to learn to knit two-at-a-time socks.