Something weird has happened. (Weirder than usual, I mean.)
I started noticing it after my violin instructor fell in love with her pumpkin hat. She said her friends loved the hat and glove set as well, and a friend of hers photographed her wearing it.
I made fingerless gloves for another friend whose house is cold but needs to do a lot of typing, and when I gave them to her, she mentioned that she’d worn holes in the slipper-socks I made last Christmas.
You wore holes in my socks? At that point, I would knit the woman anything. That’s pretty much the definition of knitworthiness! I went right out and bought yarn to make her new slipper socks. “That’s odd,” I said to her. “I didn’t think that would happen.”
She said, “Oh, I just wear them as regular socks.”
Okay. They’re thick, so I don’t see how that would be comfortable under a shoe, but all right.
In the middle of this, by the way, I made fingerless gloves for Kiddo2 because she liked the alternate yarn I’d bought for the friend’s fingerless gloves. “I didn’t use it,” I said, “because as the Yarn Harlot says, it’s super-not-matchy.
She didn’t care. She wanted them anyhow. So, gloves. And people started asking her about them.
A few days ago, Kiddo2 said, “Oh, {Girl from religious education class} wants you to knit her socks for Christmas.”
Me: “??”
Kiddo2: “Like the ones you made {Boy in religious education class.}”
Last year, I gave Bibles to my RE students who didn’t already have their own Bibles (local secondhand store: SCORE. Brand-new remaindered Bibles, same edition as the ones in the RE classroom, for about $.50 each.) and knitted slipper-socks for the one kid who had his own Bible already.
After a minute, I said, “How did {Girl} know about the slippers?”
Ah, that. Apparently one day in school, the boy pulled off his shoe and stuck his foot in the air, shouting, “Hey everyone! Guess who made my socks? Kiddo2’s mom!”
What’s going on with wearing slippers for socks? Because these slippers were made with super-bulky yarn. That cannot be comfortable. It just can’t.
Regardless, now I have an order for slipper-socks.
And last week, my Patient Husband came to me and said, “You know those fingerless gloves? Well, my office is kind of cold.”
I’m looking at making, at this point, three pairs of slipper socks, two sets of fingerless gloves, a washcloth, and a mobius scarf before Christmas. And I’m sure there’s something I’m forgetting. But these are wanted, and there’s something about knitting for folks who want the item. It doesn’t feel like knitting. It feels more like creating, and that’s amazing. Amazing, and a little weird.
Yay for knit-worthy friends and family! It’s awesome when you know your work is appreciated.
Knitting really is a dying art. So few people have ever worn or owned anything not mass produced by a factory. I can understand the novelty excitement. 🙂