My husband's birthday is in 10 days and I'm making him a pair of socks. It's a somewhat odd thing to do for him, because: He hates itchy wool; he finds any amount of bulk in his shoe uncomfortable; and he's extremely concerned that handknit socks will not stay up. But he admits to being thrilled that I am knitting him a pair, because it means "I'm thinking about him."
What he doesn't really appreciate though, is what a mammoth act of love it is for me to knit him socks. I find the process angst-ridden. It's not the normal sock issues that faze me. The short rows, picking up stitches for the gusset, grafting the toe together- all of that is fine. It's finding needles small enough to get gauge. I'm using 0s and honestly, should really be working with 00s. Aren't they a pain in the butt? First of all, they're the size of toothpicks. They're sharp so they irritate my fingers. Psychologically, it's seems like the bloody things will take forever. And then of course there's the problem of THERE'S STILL ANOTHER ONE TO KNIT...
Anyway, I sat down with my husband last night to watch the Patriots play football, thinking, now here's some quality time I can spend with him and make some REAL progress on these socks. After about 15 minutes, I realized the tension I feel when knitting on 0 needles is NOTHING compared to the stress of being in the same room with a freaked out football fan. There was pacing. There was yelling at the tv. There was SCREAMING obscenities at the players AND the coach who one would think must be the biggest idiot on the planet. I was thinking, haven't they won the majority of Superbowls played this century, all under the direction of this man?? Including the Superbowl my husband and oldest daughter attended? (The one where Paul McCartney performed Hey Jude. See for me, the most moving aspect of that once in a lifetime event wasn't that the Patriots won. It was that Audrey got to see a live performance by a former Beatle....)
Well, I couldn't take the stress of the socks AND my husband's game anxiety, so I retreated to the relative calm of my bedroom. I knit a few rows while watching an episode of Without A Trace, where a woman is driven so crazy by her life that she convinces a priest she needs an exorcism. After that, I read a chapter of my book group book, Mapping the Edge, about a women who is so overwhelmed by her housewife/mother roles that she disappears to Italy for a rest. Isn't escapism great?
Now back to those socks,
Yours in knitting,
Claire
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