Socks temptation

The photo above used to be a great photo from Knitting Daily which has since been deleted. Damn! They offer some pretty nice free sock knitting patterns. You have to give them your email address and they'll probably spam you afterwards (just hit unsubscribe), but I think it is worth it.

When I started knitting I was sure I'd never bother to knit socks. Being someone who's always favoured 100% cotton, black, man's socks (although more recently I've discovered that navy to light stonewashed jeans blue shades are my new favourites, even if I almost never wear matching jeans), I hardly have any use for knitted socks. Thus my previous prejudice against the idea.

However, one day I remembered that when I was a kid I loved these big thick-wool slippers that I wore in bed. They were so large that they slipped off my feet during sleep and that was what made them perfect, because I only needed them in the early night while my bed was still cold. By the time the bed got warm I would want to kick them off easily, and I would want to do it already asleep because, as most children, I didn't have any trouble falling asleep pretty much as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Obviously I wouldn't be able to find any thing like that in a store. Instead I picked my needles, a skein of chunky wool and a sock recipe and knitted a pair of socks a few sizes larger than my feet, with wide cuffs too. I used some amazing merino wool, luscious Malabrigo Chunky in Azul Profundo colourway to be precise. Oh... my... god... so much better than my childhood ones... It's like having a warm cloud on my feet. Love them. The only thing wrong with them is that I can only use them in the coldest month because they're so warm, (that's also the only time I need to sleep with them, so there is really nothing wrong with them, to be frank).

In the process of knitting my slippers (I like to call them sleepers), I discovered I love knitting socks. Don't ask me why, but I suspect that nearly instant gratification has got a lot to do with it: socks knit up so fast! I just can't resist... specially when I start getting bored in the endless process of sweater knitting and I start growing a desperate need to get something finished... Fast! Anything!

All of this to justify I've broken my pledge to not buy more yarn this year and bought a few sock yarn skeins. I had to... you don't understand! I'd already knitted a pair in some fine fingering yarn that is completely inappropriate for socks (they are close to growing holes only after being used a few times) and was getting more and more tempted to continue to waste expensive yarn this way, against my better judgement. So I've decided that, in order to save time and money, it is better to keep sock yarn in a different category from "normal" yarn. I also had to buy matching needles for the yarn.