Every Saturday morning Rob and I have breakfast at our favorite local coffee house. They make fabulous pastries, and crepes and have a great tea selection. Oh, and people rave about the coffee, too. We're "regulars" there, everybody knows our names. We often see the same neighborhood faces there, and it's been a wonderful way to get to know some of our fellow Seattlites.
One family, in particular, tends to be there at the same time as us on Saturdays. They have a little girl who's probably four or five years old. She's quite social, very sweet, and very enthusiastic about my sock knitting. When I had first cast on for Dad's Father's Day socks (they're toe up, BTW), she was watching me work on it, trying very hard to figure out what on earth I was doing. I showed her the teeny little toe, and told her that someday it would be a sock big enough for a Daddy to wear. She looked at me like I'd OD'd on the chai, but each week she would peek from her table to see how the sock was coming along.
As the weeks went by she became braver and braver, eventually walking across the cafe, when necessary, to chat and ask about the sock. Her routine question was "How's the sock doin'?" How's it doin', like it's my new employee, or team mate, or friend. Like it's working with me in this endeavor to make socks long enough and tall enough to keep my father's feet cozy this winter (rather than what it's really doing, which is mocking me with it's lack of progress - in spite of hours and hours of knitting).
When I'd laid the sock aside for awhile, to turn my attention toward Clapotis, my response for a couple of weeks was, "Well, the sock needed a break for a little while." She would nod sagely and agree that sometimes, breaks are needed. I haven't seen her in a couple of weeks, but tomorrow just might be the day, and I'm actually considering not taking the sock because...she'll know that Father's Day was last week.
I really don't want to show her that it still has an inch and some ribbing to go. New motivation for staying on track with knitting projects: the little girl at the coffee shop.
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