So I don't have much new knitting progress to show -- I'll save the Regia socks until I have at least one of them done. Instead, I thought I would share one of the things that makes me love where I work.

John and I have had a lot of conversations about "what men like" when it comes to knititng. I have been informed in no uncertain terms that he will not accept any garment with stripes. This includes socks. Socks can only be from a very narrow range of colors: dark blue, black, dark green, maybe brown, maybe deep maroon colors (but only on rare occasions). When I knit up a little test swatch of the lovely grey Opal that Emma sent me (specifically for his extremely picky self) and asked if he would wear socks out of it, figuring it would be impossible to go wrong with a grey sock, I got the answer "probably". "Probably?" I said, "I'm not sure I want to spend a lot of time knitting you socks that you'll "probably" wear." He just shrugs and smiles. And I know that I will make him the socks and he will probably love them, but I am a little unnerved that after 4 years of marriage I still can't figure out what color socks he likes.

I didn't do much better with the sweater conversation. He's willing to widen out the color range a little bit, but more than one color in a garment is out. Too much patterning is out. It can't be itchy or too fuzzy. At one point I read him a post from Kristi's blog and he just nodded smugly. Because now I had proof that he was not unusual in his tastes.

So lately I have been asking all the men I know about their color preferences and whether or not they would wear striped socks. My brother surprised me by telling me he would wear striped socks if they colors weren't too wild. He'd even put up with a striped sweater (but he lives in Houston and I can't see knitting him a sweater...). My father loves colorful things. He'd wear a man's version of my Silk Garden Sweater and wouldn 't have a problem with any kind of socks. Well, okay, he'd probably draw the line at pink... but I really can't imagine knitting him pink socks.

Now, work is a more interesting place to ask this question because there are more European men than Americans. In particular, I have a number of Greek and Russian guys and I was curious about what their viewpoint might be. Picture, if you will, me standing in a cubicle with another manager and a software developer discussing knitted socks and acceptable sweater colors. I learned, some interesting things. For instance, apparently you can always tell American tourists in Greece because they wear extremely bright colors that don't always go together. However, both of them wouldn't mind a sweater out of my Silk Garden, and one of them had a yellow sweater that he really likes. For socks, they leaned towards black and blue, but they would probably be willing to try tasteful patterns.

But the funny part of this conversation came one the other manager looked at me and said, "You know, there is one guy here who always has great socks! All different colors, neat patterns..." and then he gets up and goes over to the guy and we all have a look at his socks to prove his point. How many of you get to do a random sock inspection at work -- and have everyone be good natured about it?

So I'm taking a poll... if you're a guy, what are your color preferences? Are stripes okay? If you like to knit for a particular guy, what restrictions has he placed on wearable projects? Stripes? Inquiring minds want to know.

And now I am back to my sock project... a sock that John wouldn't wear even if it was freezing cold outside, his shoes were wet and it was from the only clean pair of socks left in his sock drawer!