super speedy sister sock

So I really wasn't going to do any Christmas knitting this year, as I have been dead busy with various Big Projects lately. (If you are wondering what, there is a hint here! I know, it's all quite exciting). Then my sister phoned a couple of days ago. I hadn't done any Christmas shopping so needed a quick run down on what her eleventy billion kids wanted from Auntie Rubbishknitter. She suggested, as there has been a dearth of income in this house of late, that I could make the kids something. I politely declined, as not only am I a bit strapped for time but they are mostly teenagers and probably excruciatingly embarrassed by my creations. So she reeled off a list of presents and mercifully, as they were all the sort of thing that could be easily achieved on a 10 minute Amazon spree, I was starting to feel a bit calmer and more organised about the whole Christmas thing. Until I asked her what she wanted, and she casually said, 'oh i don't mind, a pair of socks or something'.

To be fair, a non-knitter probably sees this as a pretty innocuous request, easily fulfillable in a supermarket if you're lazy. But someone like me is physically unable to buy socks as a Christmas present for a close family member. Especially when a recent Kemp's sale cleared out a load of Regia sock yarn at £1.20 a ball, some of which mysteriously found its way over my threshold. I may not have a lot of time these days but I wasn't Manchester Yarn Day Speed Knitting Champion for nothing! So I found myself hurriedly casting on for the fastest sock in the West. It's plain toe up garter rib using my old fave knitty universal sock pattern, and I have to say this is possibly the world's quickest sock to make. Look, two days of evening-only knitting in and I am nearly there on sock one! The trouble is, you see, this is a bit of a can of worms I have opened....I have another sister too, who is likely to get jealous. Good job I stocked up at Kemp's really ;)