With less than a week to go to Christmas I decided that I needed to make Tristyn a pair of socks. I still had my West Coast Socks (the 1st one) on my sock needles so I picked up a new pair of needles from the store, cast on and began to knit furiously.
Sometime during the approach the heel, I noticed the sock looked a little....smaller than usual....even though I had chosen to make the next size up for Tristyn. I told myself that it was because the last two pairs of socks I had made were adult socks and I was just used to seeing larger socks. Around the heel I went and as I got closer and closer to the toe it became more clear that something was wrong. I ignored that too, bound off the toe and got started on the cuff of the second sock. I only had two and a half days before Christmas to finish it and as the tasks and errands that needed to be done before the holidays started to demand that it was time they be completed I had to admit that the second sock might not get done. Looking for a way to justify that the socks would be worth staying up many late hours, I asked Maia to try on the sock so I could admire a child's foot in a hand knit sock and further spurn me on to aching fingers and a finished second sock.
It didn't fit. She barely got the first two inches of her foot into the sock. I nearly cried. In relief! Yes, relief! There was a reason to give up on the second sock because there was no way I could frog the first one and reknit it. I also discovered the reason for my too-small first sock to be wrong sized needles. I didn't realize I had sized down in needles when I picked up the new set. It wasn't the stress of the upcoming holidays making me knit tighter after all!
Even though my relief was so great it was nearly palpable, I felt sorry that I didn't have a handmade gift for Tristyn. I tried to think of what I could do with the single sock and remembered some sock toy making book that I saw some time ago at the bookstore. There wasn't any time to go to the bookstore and I only had one sock anyhow. I thought and thought for awhile how to make an animal out of a solitary sock and then finally I came upon an idea.
A penguin! To be honest, seeing this gift card turn up on every flat surface in every room this past week is what gave me the idea. The owner of this card picks it up and puts it down a dozen times a day and can never seem to find it. I figured, heck, if this penguin was orange, mine could be green and blue and white. And striped. Who needs a black and white penguin anyhow?
I might not have needed black and white to make a penguin but I did need to look at some pictures of real ones to figure out to place the wings and beak because after all the cookie baking I think my brain was half baked and I couldn't remember how either of those things looked on a penguin! Then, the more I looked at Scruffy the Salvaged Sock Penguin the more I was sure he looked anything but like a penguin. But an orange penguin in a space suit doesn't really look like a penguin either now, does it?
