Tokyo Stitches: Half a pair of socks

Not too long ago, I bought a ball of sock yarn in Tokyo -- which is harder to do that you might believe. Anyway, lovely purples and greens, and this was a sock destined for my feet.

Enter my first grade daughter. "Is that for MY socks?" she asks, as she's been asking for socks since I knit some for her brother. I promise her, yes, they are for her. Later, she chooses the Nemo sock yarn, then rejects that as it's too scratchy. Little brother gets a SECOND pair of socks (which is good, because the first pair were really not the greatest).

I start in on the green and purple pair for her -- a very loose twist, these socks are knit tightly on 1s (since I had no 0s), and I've been trying the sock on her as we go. "I LOVE it!" she says as the sock is a cuff on her leg. "I LOVE it!" she says as the leg is nearly complete and the heel flap finished.

"I LOVE it!" she says as the sock's gusset is finished, and I'm heading down the finish line to the end of the toes. I knit this sock at Tokyo Disney Sea.

I knit this sock on a bus and a train on a Saturday night. I knit this sock in the car on the way to the bike paths (yep, we have to drive to get to the bike paths).

Last night, as I was finishing the toes, I had her try it on for the 10th time to make sure that the length was right. The fit was perfect. The sock was 5 or 6 rows from the very end.

She has it on her foot....she gets a look on her face....and she says, "It feels a little too tight here. And I don't like it here."

Now the last thing I want to do is make a second sock when the first is not loved. And I'm not going to finish this one and break the yarn unless she loves it. So I tell her (and I really mean it), "It's totally okay if you don't like it. I will take it apart and make a sock for me out of the same yarn if you don't like it. I will make you something else, and you don't need to worry about it."

She is relieved, and tells me, "Good, because I like it, but it's really scratchy, and I like it, but I don't want to wear it," and she has this idea instead: that I should knit the second sock as well, and then sell them for $5 and give the money to Room to Read , (an amazing charity that we are working as a family to make money for with read-a-thons and lemonade stands). She tells me that I should make a LOT of them. Nice idea, but at $30 a skein, I'd be knitting myself into the poorhouse. She suggests that we sell them for $35 a pair. I suggest that so many hours of my time is worth more than $5, and that I also don't think anyone is going to pay $100 for a pair of socks (and even then I never worked for so cheap!) I change the subject and ask her what she'd like me to knit for her. She points to the scarf I just finished as a present, and wants "socks make out of that soft yarn there."