Stealth Socks

If I ever need to camouflage my feet in a field of lavender, these will be the socks to wear.

They are actually stealth socks because they were the socks that lived on my desk while I was still dissertation-writing. Before I can write anything I need to spend most of the day in displacement activities, deliberately not thinking about what I will actually write if and when I finally get to my desk. I was worried that I was falling behind behind because I was displacing too well, so I began these as the activity of choice. I would sit at my desk knitting round and round and round, sometimes doing some reading, sometimes just pondering, until I reached the magic moment when I threw the sock down and scribbled madly for half an hour, to emerge a thousand words better off and feeling as high as a kite. I knitted practically all of the first sock that way, but then I finished the dissertation, and they languished a little. They became travel knitting, and telly knitting, and main knitting once the jumper was done, and I finally finished them last night.

Vital Statistics

May 7th to October 18th 2007, a 60 stitch sock on 2.5mm needles (started on an elderly pair of Inox/Prym needles, completed on Knitpicks needles, which I prefer), in Schoeller & Stahl Socka Color shade 2416, bought from Web of Wool at the Knitting and Stitching Show four years ago (a fine vintage, matured carefully in a plastic tub in the wardrobe). Photographed on street art in Norwich, because travelling 20 miles to photograph socks in public spaces is easier than tidying up. Possibly the most fraternal pair I have ever knitted. It doesn't bother me.