Best Intentions

The Big Guy has been after me about some socks.

Back about a million years ago, we lived up in the back of beyond:

Dennysville, Maine.

I'm not sure you could even find it on a map, but it was the blackfly capital of the world.

I once peed my pants from laughing, watching The Big Guy mow what we called our front lawn...it looked like a Pink Panther cartoon, where Pink was chased by a swarm of blackflies- one giant big black cloud was following/chasing him as he ran full bore with that mower.

We had 40 acres up there. He mowed 1/4 of one acre.

There is a wool mill in Canada named Briggs and Little.

Oh, be still my heart. Didn't I adore that place!

I used to drive up there occasionally, to pet the sheep, see the mill, and naturally, buy yarn. It is the coolest place ever! I thought they'd closed down in 1994- the year I left that area. There was a huge fire. But, hooray for them, they rebuilt! And they have a website!

I bought this, way back when.

This has the Big Guy's name all over it. Hunting Socks. In Briggs and Little wool.

This is true OUTDOORS WOOL. It's oily. It knits like nothing else, and when knit at tight gauge, it's wind-water-and bullet-proof. (But don't stand in front of a bullet to check.)

So I started socks, way back when, in the early 90's, on 5 DPN's (Thanks to Sherri, an ER nurse at Calais Hospital and the many, many nights I spent hanging there while on call.).

And realized quite early into it, that I have an avid dislike for dpn's.

But, way back when, I was unaware that there was any other way to knit a sock.

(Don't even talk to me about socks on straights. Those aren't socks.)

Flash forward to 2007. I now knit socks.

On circs. Magic -looped.

And I love it.

In a yarn crawl through my attic one day, I came across the familiar Briggs and Little logo on a plastic bag. I may have screamed. Kids may have come running. They still don't understand the yarn fetish, but they are getting used to it.

There were the long forgotten socks. Um, or sock.

About 7 inches of one leg. (The Big Guy is, in fact, a big guy.)

I decided then and there that this yarn should become socks, and that it should happen by Christmas. Thankfully, I did not specify Christmas of which year, or I should have failed miserably.

They should be a surprise, I decreed. I will work on them during the wee hours, when I am on my own. And I began in October, while my boys were off moose hunting. Ahem, October of 2007.

But Thing One saw the socks-in-progress. (In fact, she helped me wind off the yarn into cakes, after frogging the original 'leg'. My kids LOVE to wind yarn.)

And she ratted the second my boys walked through the door.

And The Big Guy remembered the long ago sock. And commented that if I were to make him said socks, they would have to be knee socks so they don't slide down into The Hunting Boots.

Aaaaaand the socks went back into the ziploc bag from whence they came. They now mock me from the knitting basket. Nightly.

Knee socks. Sigh. Groan. Gasp.