Random Thought d’Jour

This is so random. But I was working on That Damned Shawl this morning during my precious (half) hour of morning no-kidness, and it suddenly occurred to me: baby alpaca yarn would make incredible socks for people who don’t walk.

Did your brain just completely freeze up on that? Yes, I know. It seems like a really dumb thing to be thinking and I got a good laugh about it, too.

But back before I had kids (or a husband, for that matter), I used to occasionally go in and volunteer at a retirement home. A lot of the old folks, especially the less-ambulatory ones, would complain about their feet being cold. They’d get all kinds of “medical” socks designed to help keep their feet warm – most of which didn’t keep their feet warm and/or itched like crazy. I don’t know which I hate more: having cold feet, or having itchy feet. But having itchy, cold feet? That’s just got to be a special kind of hell on earth.

And then it occurred to me: A pair of socks made out of the baby alpaca I’m currently working with would keep your feet warm even if you were camping in the Arctic Circle, and there is butter harsher than this stuff. Barring a wool allergy, it couldn’t raise an itch on the newest of babies or the oldest of centenarians. They'd wear out in about six seconds if you actually walked on them, but if you were, say, confined to a wheelchair, or only made about six steps per day from your bed to your easy chair and back again? They’d be perfect.

Soft as cobwebs. Warmer than “plain old” wool. Breathes like cotton.

Hmm.

I wonder how much extra yarn I’m going to have at the end of this project…

OK, that’s my Random Thought d’Jour. Carry on with your lives, people, whilst I ponder the ins and outs of making enough baby alpaca socks (of all things) to keep the non-ambulatory seniors of my home town (who must number in the dozens if not hundreds) from the hideous perils of cold, itchy feet…(Lord, but I do get wildly impractical notions into my head, don’t I?!)