New Years' Eve

Last night, as the clock ticked toward midnight I was casting off a pair of socks.

The socks that would not be cast off.

I feel like I've been knitting them my whole life. If I believed in reincarnation, I might think I had been knitting them even longer. In actuality, it has been a project I've bopped to on and off all year, but, my! That year felt long.

Last November, when I was in Iowa, I bought this adorable yarn, dyed on yarn blanks, and rolled into yarn cakes. The color was "Middle earth" -- a perfect gift for my Tolkein loving husband. I gifted it to him on Christmas.

It turns out, a more perfect gift would have been to knit them. (They weren't the self-knitting variety.) This year, I cast on and set off on the grand adventure.

I have knit plenty of pairs of socks before, but, for some reason, the ones I knit for my husband Just. Take. Forever. Maybe it is his annoying need for tight socks. In order for them to be acceptable, I have to have him try them on many, many times. The only thing worse than spending a lifetime knitting a pair of socks is for them not to be worn after completion.

Maybe it is his need that they be thigh high. On a normal person. On him, these tight suckers end up widening out quite a bit and gripping his calf.

Maybe it is his need for inches and inches of ribbing. Inches and inches. Yards, I believe.

In any case, knitting these socks reminds me of the old Vermont story I heard years ago: a man was given 6 months to live and promptly moved to remote Vermont, saying, "I may have only 6 months to live, but -- here -- it will feel like forever!" This is the recommended pair of socks for such a life sentence!