Because the basket is out of my reach I admittedly don't match up the socks as often as I should. My husband saw socks poking out of the top of the basket and told me we should play a game called "Good Day Mate." I laughed it off and mumbled something about getting to it later in January.
A few days later both sets of our parents and his sister came in to town to celebrate Christmas and New Years with us. Our families arrived within 30 minutes of each other and after hugs and hellos we sat down to catch up. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Michael standing in the doorway. With the basket. I looked at him and shook my head - horrified that his mother would find out that I did not match up her grandson's socks! He smiled and walked into the room and announced that we were going to play a game...all of us and the game was called "Good Day Mate." He proceed to explain that he was going to put the basket of socks in the middle of the floor and we were to start matching them. At the end the person with the most matches would win a prize.
Though they were laughing at him, the mothers and sister in law quickly jumped in and started matching the socks. The boys managed to disappear and the fathers sat off to the side watching us like we were nuts. Some of mine were the first to go. It's really easy to match up socks with patterns.
The more difficult ones were the 300 or 400 white men/boys socks and my plethora of solid black socks. Suddenly I heard calls of "do you have any black socks with gold a toe?" and "this sock has some kind of pattern on it but a narrow band at the top...do you have a match?" And to my shock and dismay and secret pleasure socks were being matched!
I looked over and saw that my dad had all these white socks laid out in front of him and my father in law, who claims to be a bit color blind, was helping him match up this pile of socks. My mother in law had started a pile of white socks with holes in them and was hiding them to prevent my husband and father in law from wanting to keep them for oil changes or something (don't get me wrong, I'm all about re-purposing, but my dear husband has BAGS of rags in the garage so I was absolutely fine with this slight of hand!)
When all was said and done we had matched up almost 150 pairs of socks. My mother asked if I just went out and bought new socks instead of matching the ones I had. I was a bit sheepish about it all and had no idea we had that many socks. I'm still not sure exactly what my mother in law thought of me, but it sure is nice to have a fabulous selection of socks again!
The finished product. Don't let the bag fool you. The bag is 3' tall and was at least 2' filled!
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