Dad and I went to a local Italian restaurant last Saturday.  Despite the fact that dad won’t eat onions, tomatoes or garlic (or anything made with those ingredients) - which disqualifies almost every type of Italian food for him, he is able to find enough there to make him happy.  For example, since it’s in New England it has clam chowder.  It seems to be a rule that any restaurant opening anywhere in New England is required to offer clam chowder - regardless of said eatery’s own specialization.  So you see things like: Minestrone, Pasta e fagioli, Clam Chowder or Egg Drop Soup, Hot and Sour Soup and Clam Chowder.

The restaurant is very good, the food is of excellent quality and is quite plentiful.  But the thing that really sets them apart is their bread.  This bread tastes like it just came out of your grandma’s oven - homemade doesn’t begin to describe it!

And they sell it by the loaf for the princely sum of $1.85 - about half what I would pay in the supermarket bakery for something of equivalent quality and taste :)

One of Dad’s problems has been an advancing case of rheumatoid arthritis which has made moving around very difficult and painful for him.  He has been wearing the socks I’ve made for him because, being hand made and of DK/worsted weight yarn - they have much more substantial body than the little nylon cheapies he’s been buying for the last 40 years.

I had thought he was just wearing them around the house, but a week or so ago, I saw him cramming them into his sneakers because it would have been too difficult and uncomfortable to exchange them for something lighter.

I asked him if he would like me to make him some more socks but he said not to bother.  What he had was fine.

Yeah, right :)

So I started another pair of socks for him - in sport weight yarn this time.  They will still have (I hope!) the body that makes them easy for him to put them on.  And, they will be lighter weight and less bulky than the ones he already has.

I had started a pair of Primavera socks with this yarn.  About halfway down the cuff, I knew I was never going to wear them because I didn’t like the colors - too dark and too masculine.  However, it seemed like the ideal thing for a pair of dad socks so I cast on Saturday morning and went to work.

And when I told dad that I had done so - he was so obviously pleased I had to laugh :)

I made an odd but interesting discovery while working on the sock.  This is sport weight yarn (Woolease, sadly discontinued) and I’m working the socks on size 3 US (3.0 - 3.125 mm) needles.  I had started them on an old aluminum set.  I like metal needles for socks and that’s what I almost always use.  However, these were a dark green color and the combination of them and the dark, variegated yarn made the stitches almost impossible to see - even with two lights on!  There were blue needles too, but they were also dark and there were only three of them anyway.

Aha!  I have bamboo needles in the right size!  Light colored needles would solve the problem nicely, so I switched the greenies for the bamboo and knitted on.

You knew there was a “but” coming, right?  I do like bamboo needles for some yarns - but this yarn clung to them (in my mother’s immortal phrase) like sh*t to a blanket.  I could move the stitches but only with some difficulty.  The combination of these needles and this yarn were not making for especially fluid knitting.

And then last night, rummaging around in my needle vase (doesn’t everyone have a jar/bottle/vase full of needles on their coffee table?) I found a set of nickel-plated brass double-points - size 3!  I had acquired them some time ago, had no immediate use for them, put them away and forgotten all about them.  So, I switched the sock over to them and…  Well, it was like ice skating on new, sharp blades over clean, smooth ice - just enough friction to keep things manageable and otherwise - swift and easy :)  You can see them in the picture of the sock above.

So now I’ve meandered to the point.

I don’t use size 3 needles very often.  Hardly at all.  In the smaller needle sizes, I’m far more likely to reach for 2s than 3s.  So how in the world did I wind up with four sets of them?

Knitters are certainly many good things, but I can tell you from first-person experience - some knitters are nuts :)