So Very Lost in Translation

All my mom wanted for xmas, apparently, were wool leg warmers.

• Me: Leg warmers?  Not leggings?  Cuz you described leggings to me, not KNITTED wool tubes for your legs, which, you know, I could have made for you!

• Her: Oh yeah, huh? (Or my translating abilities paraphrase for you.)

This makes me giggle just a little as it was 80 degrees in LA, just a couple days ago, when I found this out.  It's not like she was sitting there freezing at the moment.  But she was trying to decide whether or not to keep the footless tights I hunted down for her all over Seattle, ones almost thick enough to be leggings that would fit her diminutive figure!  (Yey for gift receipts!)

But seriously, were I a religious person, I would swear on a stack of bibles that it was footless tights that she painstakingly described to me (or so I thought).  Including telling me that I used to buy them at UCLA when I was in high school (or so I heard).  That was what cemented it into my head.  They could only be footless tights, or those god awful white waffle-patterned thermal underwear bottoms. (It was an all girls school, warmth beat fashion any day on cold days, even in LA.)  Because when I was in high school leg warmers had gone off the school uniform list.  But she insists that what she had actually said was what that the girls used to go buy across the street at UCLA.  The girls...she worked there for over 27 years.  "Girls" could mean anyone between 1976 to 2003...(sigh.)  I will, of course, give her the benefit of the doubt.  Cuz hey, I get to knit for her!

I've hunted down a pattern and pulled out the only skein of Machine-Washable Cascade 220 wool in a color so not my mom's (dark purple) to test out this pattern.  See, the issues my mom will have with regards to obtaining store bought leg warmers, of course, is that they aren't wool, and (she measured for me) they need to be not much more than 12" long.  Yes, not a misprint, 12.  Standard leg warmers? Acrylic and ~19", or so I found out when I started looking for a twelfth night gift for her.

I'm probably not going to make the deadline, I'm only halfway through the first one, and that's okay.  And if they aren't her style (and definitely) not her color, they are just the right size for my niece.  And if she outgrows them before the next time it's cold enough in LA for them to be used, she can use them as arm warmers or something.  Those are a thing, right?