Jazzysocks

These are a pair of custom fit, no nonsense, top down, heel flap socks. I started them back in January, maybe you remember, and then there was a lot of baby having and leg twisting, etc., etc. In the wake of my shawl knitting frenzy I finished them off. Oh, and by the way, I was wretchedly ill when I finished them. This is no exaggeration. I tend to exaggerate. I thought you ought to know.


I was so wretchedly ill that I only managed a couple of hours sleep over a two day period. It was that kind of illness where you're sore deep down in your bones, and your skin feels sticky even when dry. My internal thermostat was going crazy and after some harsh bargaining with the Tylenol it opted not to go above 101F but not to go lower than 99F. My throat, however, was a real shark in the medicinal negotiations. It refused to compromise on anything. It made the homeopathic medicine cry.
I finished the foot of the second sock during the worst of this illness. There was a lot of one row, put the knitting down, stare at the mobile above my baby's bed for an hour, pick the knitting up, knit a row, repeat. My baby is also sick, and there was a lot of staring at mobiles going on. There were some points where we just stared at each other and telecommunicated about how much this bug sucked. He's my buddy.
Four days into this festival of germs, I'm starting to feel like the party's winding down. My throat is allowing for some solid foods and my body has cooled off. I have a throaty wispy voice which by husband describes as sexy, but which I would call contagious sounding. There's a lot of hacking and gasping for air, which I suppose just makes me sexier. The baby is still running a fever, but the doc says it's O.K. so I'll try not to freak out all over him and tell him that 4 days of fever is not O.K. for a mom, let alone a baby.
I'm going to sandwich this blog post about illness with a tiny bit of knitting and hope you'll still consider this a knitting blog. I don't want to have to change the title to "The Wendigo Gets Sick and or Hurt a Whole Lot, Plus There's a Little Knitting Going On". So, on to the socks.


I think that they are hideous. They remind me of modern dance, or free form jazz, or eating too much candy and then going on a violent amusement park ride run by a very young person who seems frighteningly uninvested in their job. They are totally gross. They are jazzysocks. I'm calling them that, because bad jazz is my least favorite thing in the world. Really bad jazz being either the Kenny G. or the crazed squealing horn variety and about 70 percent of the jazz in between. Billy Holiday, you know I love you. I'm not talking about you. You're more blues, and I love blues. Back to the socks, I think they went from Missoni to Methuselah when I knit the second foot. The small stripes circling the first foot are cute. The large sludge colored stripe on the second foot is throwing everything off. It's jazzy.
I'm not going to blame this jazzy quality on the dyer, Farmhouse Yarns. They made a beautiful yarn with colors I love. The creamy white with touches of yellow, pale blue and pink with a dark vegetable green does in fact remind me of "wild flowers" (that's the colorway). I think that in my delirious sickbed knitting I made one foot two stitches smaller than the other one. It's totally my fault.


These will be the socks I wear when I just don't care what other people think, which is most of the time.