socks
a propos of nothing at all, except that if i go to bed and go to sleep the next thing i know it'll be another zarking work day.
so there's this brand of pure virgin sheared-in-canada six-stranded unspun wool known as buffalo wool. so canadian, it's sold by the half-pound 'puck' instead of the usual 'ball' or 'skein'. used for making those amazing cowichan sweaters that let you experience life as a labrador retriever, for those who've been around the west coast for a while. just before christmas, i happened into a store that was selling off all their stock of it because it's been discontinued (again). great honking piles of pure virgin genuine nostalgia wool for - well, it would cost less per pound to buy soup bones. so i bought a truly immoderate amount of it, hauled up my cosy catholic-girl childhood memories and started knitting socks for myself.
this is bike related. pure wool socks, right? for those cold winter rides, right? self sufficiency, yeah? it's kind of fun to own such things if you make them yourself, especially for about a dollar a pair. and i do know how to knit.
i looked up intentional-shrinking and 'fulling' instructions on one of those craft-type websites so i could get a realistic idea how much this stuff shrinks and what sort of compensations to make before i started. made a bunch of sample swatches and followed the intentional-shrinking instructions of a master seaman, no less, who makes his own socks and likes them just right. HE LIED, that's all i'm saying. he lied. my samples didn't shrink at all, so i made my socks, wore them for a while to see what they're like (drool), and tonight i washed them in an actual washing machine.
shrank down like [rude word]s, that's what. they came out looking kind of like full-body armour for seahorses - extraordinarily skinny and kind of bulbous in certain places. what i discovered though is that if you get them while they're still wet and you're mad enough, you can stretch them back out again to a more reasonable shape. so i did that, and then i put them on just to make sure they realise what kind of shape they're supposed to be. i think i like them even better like this.
the only problem is i'm not sure what will happen as they finish drying. don't want to take them off in case they shrink back again. don't want to sit up all night waiting for them to dry properly. sure as heck don't want to fall asleep in them, wake up not feeling my feet and spend the rest of my life explaining to people how double amputation came into my life. this whole bike commuting thing is a whole lot more complicated than people tell you.