Socks.

Knitters like socks.

Sometimes we just like hand-knitted socks, because if you *can* rub cashmere or alpaca or mohair all over your skin, and you’re not allergic to it, we typically choose to. Some people don’t like being touched on their feet, and that’s fine; simple, cotton, commercially made socks are fine too. But a knitter who will hesitate to spend more than the $3 for a skein of Red Heart Super Saver or $2 for a pair of Susan Bates needles will gladly drop $32 on the yarn for just one pair of socks, and not even blink. This makes no sense, because I’ve met knitters who can churn through four pairs of socks in a month, by keeping them in their purses or coat pockets and knitting as they commute or wait at the post office. But it is a fact of life that knitters value socks more highly than most other knitted things.

Image pulled from Ravelry’s Projects Page on 3/9/14 at roughly 9 PM Central

But it’s hard to explain to not-knitters why socks are awesome enough to spend this kind of money to make them. When you tell a knitter “socks”, they think this

or even just this

 

but not-knitters think this

I’m an enthusiastic advocate for making the prettiest knitting it gives you pleasure to make. If you can’t get excited about socks, so be it. But after three years of asking for socks for Christmas, I just got back from a sale at Target with these lovelies

and I’m suddenly feeling a lot less guilty about every pair of steampunk-themed, self-striping, cashmere-content, sparkly, indulgent ridicusocks I make for myself.