Before Breakfast

For years there has been a little family joke about my mother in law, a perennial early riser, who once told my father in law to get out of bed so she could fix it. I used to laugh at the story, but you know...

I woke up today full of energy. Vim and vigour were my middle name. The coffee ass on and I was ready to go. I had visions of clean sheets for the household, beds made, laundry put away, closet and dressers organized. I was raring to go.

The fact that it was 4:30 in the morning meant all I could do was retreat to my study to do something quiet.

So I did this. Only it kept growing and I had to go out of the study to the family room. (The slug-a-beds are all upstairs.) It just kept growing to the point where I may have to go back to the store to get another 4 pack of the floor tiles. Even this relatively small shawl has its points off the corners of the blocking tiles. You can also see why you really should get yourself some blocking wires.

That isn't all. The first of my sister's socks out of that nice Fabel, purchased at River City, is at the point where I can see through the skein as it unwinds while I knit. This means sock 2 is imminent.

I really like this point in a sock pair. Sock one is where you have to plan what you are going to do, where if you are doing stitch pattern from a book or following some of the marvelous sock patterns out there, where you are in your learning phase. Toe up? Top down? Ribbing? Picot edge? Heel? There are a lot of questions in the first of even a simple pair of socks. You can entertain yourself with hand painted colourways and commercial yarns where stripes and colourwork appear as if by magic. The first sock is all about planning and what will happen next. Ah but the second sock. With a second sock, you already have the answers.

Second socks are all about what comes next. Will it be that Noro sock yarn you could not leave alone on Saturday's expedition? Will it be some scrumptious Cats Pajamas yarn from Lucy Neatby? Will it be black socks for a son who has been nagging for months about how he really wants one black pair of knit socks, and all you have given him to date is a crocheted pair that he loves? Will it be the Arequippa yarn that you nagged your sister to choose, because she deserves two pairs and you were desperately looking for an excuse to buy the yarn? Will you do a crochet pair of nice thick camping socks? Second socks are the future, they are hopes and dreams. They are possibilities.

Now that the blog has been written, I've had some coffee, and I'm looking forward to the second sock and its rewards, the slugabeds are up and on their various ways. I've hit the wall between my dreams and my reality. I've got do laundry.

Honey, next week, when I feel energetic early in the morning, could you get up?

I need to wash the sheets.