Minor guilty confession of the week: I read the Dear Prudence advice column on Slate.
Or at least I used to.
In a live chat column she wrote this week, a reader enquires:
- Q. Help! Advice on Gift-Giving: I am a knitter who is knitting socks for my son’s preschool class. I intend to give these socks as Christmas gifts this year. I am keeping them a secret as I would like them to be surprises. The only one who knows is the teacher as I needed her help getting the kids’ feet sizes. My question revolves around the note I am going to include with the socks. Of course it will include washing and drying instructions (cold water and low heat); however, I am stumped about how to ask for the socks back if the kids don’t like them, so they can be redistributed. Now, I don’t really want the socks back for my own son; I would like the socks to go to someone who’d actually wear them. What would you do in this instance?
I’m mostly with the questioner – although I’d feel weird asking for the socks back for redistribution.
It’s the answer that made my hair stand on end:
- A: In this instance, I would stop with the socks and knit a sweater for my own child. While many people enjoy handmade scarves, there’s a reason people stopped wearing lumpy, itchy, droopy handmade socks as soon as industrial looms were invented. It’s sweet of you to want to make gifts for the entire class, but you’re investing way too much time in a gift that won’t be appreciated. If you want to do something handmade, maybe you should bake some treats. Or you could offer to come in and do a knitting lesson for the kids. Unless you’re making socks they can hang by the fireplace for Christmas, no one wants handmade socks in their Christmas stocking.
On behalf of all the sock knitters in the world, I am truly offended that Ms. Prudence thinks that the socks we make are “lumpy, itchy and droopy”. Perhaps we should launch a campaign to send her some socks so she can see the quality of what we make – and understand how very very wrong she is.
What do you think?