Football and Socks

I’m not a football fan.  Strike that.  I cannot follow football.  It’s so slow and boring, and what? You have to do it over until you get it right or get it past a certain point on the field?  Snore.  Even when I’ve watched it live, it just doesn’t do it for me.  And then there’s the Christmas Eve Lions game, where I jinxed them (“they won’t win unless they get that field kick….oops.”).   

Growing up in Decatur, Illinois, I was the only daughter in a house full of male Chicago Bears fans.  My mom took sporting events on TV as a reason to go shopping, and I went with her.  Which is how I’ve learned how to shop a good sale, spot dye lots so that my afghans aren’t all stripey, and learn how to coordinate a good suit with a few tops so that I don’t pack my entire closet when I travel.  I’d say that these life lessons are far more important in my life than learning that if you’re within 50 yards of a field goal on a fourth down that you kick…or whatever you do to  get the ball in that tall thing at the end of the field. 

I am sure my husband wishes he married a jock-type gal who drinks beer and enjoys watching sports, but I just can’t.  I don’t.  Like.  Sports.  I went to Michigan State and had never been to a Spartan basketball game until he took me to the Big 10 Championship in 1999.  As fireworks went off at the end of the game, I asked him , “so does this happen every time?”  He was appalled to learn  I never tailgated at a football game until my late 20s.  What can I say?  I was a foreign languages major, I was drinking cappuccinos and wearing a beret in college.

But he tolerates my knitting and I tolerate hours of sports so I can knit uninterrupted and we make a good pair.  He’s the yin to my knitty yang.

So today as the vast majority of the East Coast and the Rust Belt watches the playoffs, I made some socks.  My first knitted pair, actually.  From a pattern that isn’t from Ravelry, believe it or not!  It’s just the “basic sock” pattern from Lion Brand yarn.  With a few modifications, including the use of my new favorite 9” circular needles, I was able to make a lovely pair of socks for one of my Pay it Forward projects.  A few thoughts on socks:

• There is an odd comfort in making something so monotonous on a cold day
• Everyone loves a pair of hand-made socks
• Everyone in my family is getting a pair this year (except for my nephews and nieces, who must think I’m a lunatic 75 year old aunt for giving them knitwear for Christmas)
• I can finally make those awesome Christmas stockings my mom has made forever
• Finding the 9” circular needles seriously took my knitting to a whole new level—now there’s mittens and gloves to make, as well as preemie caps for the hospital
• Some may call using the 9” circulars instead of DPNs or the magic loop “cheating” but I call it “enjoying my hobby  without it owning me”
• Turning the heel isn’t as scary as I initially thought
•  I really must learn the kitchener stitch

Anyway, here’s the finished product:

  

I’m thinking of hosting a “learn to knit” session for my MI friends who have asked me to teach them, maybe hold it in East Lansing.  I’d have to charge for supplies, like needles and yarn…but when I think about doing this I secretly feel like a fraud—there are a lot of people out there who do this for a living, and then there’s me who rarely takes a dime for what I make, so charging for passing along my hobby seems sort of…mercenarious (if that’s a word.  Well, yes, it’s a word now.  Take that!).

So as the Bears lost I finished off my last sock.  I admired my work, and Jamie asked me who they were for.  Not wanting to disappoint him that they weren’t for him I told him I hadn’t figured that out yet.  But something tells me that I’d better go buy some blue and orange sock yarn and make him a pair before Detroit Tigers baseball begins in April..