Socks of many colors

I gave up the search for good cotton socks for summer some years ago, when I realized I could knit them. Not as easily as purchasing socks, but in the absence of decent socks, my last resort.

The idea actually came to me in a JoAnn Fabric store, not the ideal source of sock cotton. I went up and down the yarn aisles, and found nothing smaller than dishcloth cotton. I took a trip down the crochet cotton aisle, and was completely unimpressed with the current offering. Where is the fine DMC, eight ply, 30 weight my grandmother taught me with? Do they even make it?

I rounded a corner into embroidery floss. There on an end cap was a sampler packet of DMC floss, eight strands. I bought two sampler packs of primary colors , fired up the number two double points and made a pair of socks.

The first sock I knit from the top of the sampler to the bottom, the second from the bottom to the top.  One might argue they met in the middle, but only I knew that. No one even noticed one sock was half the rainbow, the other the other half. This was fifteen years ago, before mismatched socks were sold on purpose.

No, people just said “Nice socks!”

Except one little boy.

Somewhere in public a child screamed. I looked around and saw a small boy, clinging to his mother, pointing at my socks and screaming. His mother tried to turn him away, he couldn’t quit looking and screaming “Her socks don’t match.”

Eventually his mother picked him up and carried him off, but he continued to hang over her shoulder, wailing and pointing.

He couldn't have had a bad Dr. Seuss experience; it must have been a clown.