Sock Discipline

 

For the last several years, my summer tradition has been to pick up socks that have been flung aside, unfinished, during the course of the preceding fall/winter/spring. A new, enticing yarn crying out to be cast on, or somebody’s birthday that calls for handmade socks, or the sudden unanticipated need to knit a Lopi sweater lures me away, and my own socks sink into the background.

Every year I hope to have six new pairs ready to join the rotation. Every year, I end up with four. Two important birthdays, one in August and one in October, tend to derail me.

Wool Sock Season opens October 15 (because I said so). In extreme emergencies, including early frost or folk festivals in the rain – in years when those are an option—wool socks may be worn before that date, but never the new ones.

This year, with more stay-home time and a need to impose some external order to keep from drifting aimlessly 24/7, I’ve decided I have to work for at least 30 minutes, every day, on one of those discarded pairs of socks. 

The rules are:

• The pair to be featured must be already in progress. It is not permitted to cast on a new pair for this purpose, no matter how seductive the yarn. (Of course I still cast on new pairs – but they don’t qualify for the 30-minute program.)
•  Once the pair to be completed has been chosen, there is to be no diverging from this path of righteousness. . . that pair, and that pair alone, is the subject of each day’s 30-minute session.
•  No dabbling in two or three pairs at a time will be tolerated.

For three or four days, it’s a chore. Then, after about four days, real progress is easy to see and the scent of the finish line makes me go faster and faster. . .