In our house, new socks signify joy, especially new socks made from hand-dyed and hand-spun wool.

When you make clothing for your child, you become acutely aware of how they grow. Socks are a particularly good barometer for growth because foot size changes so gradually (by comparison with height, for instance). You can knit along for months and months, churning out roughly the same-sized sock which (coincidentally) always use up the same amount of wool and, due to stretch, blocking, and the alignment of the cosmos, they’ll more or less fit.

One perfectly ordinary day, though, when you least expect it, you’ll try a toeless sock on a child and come to the startling realization that you need to knit another inch before starting that toe. If you’re lucky. If you’re not-so-lucky, you have to frog the toe and re-knit it.

Then mentally recalculate how much wool it took to knit that first one and whether you now have enough for the (suddenly enormous) second one.