Mittens for Your Feet

The moral of my ode is this:
beauty is twice beauty
and what is good is doubly good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool in winter.
- Pablo Neruda, Ode to My Socks

"Ode to My Socks" has been one of my favorite poems ever since we read it in high school, years before I started knitting. I've come to love it all the more ever since I started knitting, and especially since I started knitting socks. You've seen my lovely box of handknit socks.

My dad always says there are two kinds of people in this world: Those who wear festive ties, and those you don't. A variation on the common theme of those who appreicate hand-knit gifts and those who are not worthy holds for handknit socks. Some people - even some knitters as sad as that is - just don't get it. Others, like one friend o' mine, refused to take off her first pair for three days. They (the socks, and the friends, too, I suppose) are just that wonderful. Then there are the people who really and truely get it. They make things like this:

Just for the care and feeding of handknit socks, so they aren't left to fend for themselves among the wild-type socks in a regular sock drawer (most of which are beefed-up athletic socks - very scary for the lace socks). And on the inside, it has this:

It is wintry, a little chilly but certainly not enough to warrant risking hat hair. And while I do love my mittens, it's nice to have fingers. This is when I love my handknit socks. This is why I have three pairs of socks for me on the needles in spite of the whole two boxes full I already own (hey - some of them are getting worn by now).

I suppose, however, that friends who make special boxes just for handknit socks deserve the occasional pair, too, don't they? And there are compensations. Another grateful recipient of many pairs of manly (i.e. mostly brown) handknit socks sends the occasional text message like this: Let it be noted that wool socks on a cold, rainy day are to be treasured. I think another worthy recipient is about to get his first pair of Toasty Toes socks (negative progress on which is discussed here.) Last year at the annual family Christmas party my uncle got into a 20 minute conversation on the joys of good, thick, wool boot socks. No need to convert the choir, right?

Speaking of animals, recently we met Hannah. Hannah and I went for a run this morning in the beautiful blustery sunny weather. One of us saw a squirrel and took off in a dead sprint. The other one of us tripped over the curb and fell onto her dominant (knitting) hand.

So . . . do you think I caught the squirrel?