Tuesday, August 25, 2020

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. . .

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