How I became a cool sock

Isn’t there this thing about receiving socks for Christmas and how it’s a punishment or a test of how well you can hide your disappointment? Maybe that’s only the case if you’re a child? Or if you receive nothing but socks? Or if the socks are boring? I don’t remember. I just know that at some point in my life I was under the impression that giving or receiving socks as a Christmas or birthday present was somewhat frowned upon.
As some of you might remember from a previous sock post, I used to be a plain-socks-to-look-‘professional’ kind of person. So receiving those would indeed be boring. But thanks to a set of wonderful friends with great taste in socks, I was forced to rethink my take on socks. I had received the occasional pair of pretty (souvenir) socks from friends (and even myself) before, but in the past few years the duck and I have noticed a trend: It started when our lovely friend J sent us a cool set of socks, some of which featured fluffy wolves! Those socks definitely boosted my coolness factor whenever I wore them because everyone who caught sight of them just had to tell me how cool they were (this really was the kind of gift that kept on giving)! I had, in fact, turned into a coole Socke, a ‘cool sock’ (which must be one of the weirdest German expressions for ‘cool person’) overnight. After that I received quite a few nice pairs of socks – maybe the duck and my friends had plotted to make me cooler (perhaps out of embarrassment)? Or maybe there just are more fun sock brands around these days? What do you think?
Reflecting on cool socks also made the duck and me think about Christmas presents. We actually  believe that Christmas presents should be optional (and we don’t ever expect anyone to get us anything because we’re just not that great at picking out presents ourselves and we try way too hard which stresses us out more than it should). In fact, the duck and I prefer sending out homemade Christmas cards because we worry that what we get the other person might feel forced and impersonal. I wish we were as good at seeking out presents as our lovely friends are (I think I’ve never ugly-cried as much about amazing unexpected gifts as I have in the past few years). There have been a few instances, however, when we saw something and knew exactly who we’d want to send it to. Those rare moments (I guess because our favorite kind of shopping still is grocery shopping) excite us more than they should and we find ourselves waking up in the middle of the night wondering how the giftee will react. Cards can do the same for us, though, and even though we tend to spend way too much time on designing them, the outcome can be quite rewarding. This is the kind of stress that we appreciate because if the design isn’t good, that’s our fault alone and not that of the local shops or the internet for not having exactly what we want to give away…
Do you like shopping for Christmas presents? Do you think they are compulsory?

Socks

Socks – worn in lots of places all over the world, they offer a great opportunity to express yourself, even if the rest of your outfit is pretty plain. In the past few years I’ve gotten used to wearing boring old black socks (the duck prefers to go sockless altogether), sometimes because work clothing guidelines dictated it, sometimes because I wanted to look more ‘professional’ in a not at all professional environment (nothing beats professional looking socks in making a good first impression, right?!). In Japan, however, the sock-game seems to be strong with the people, even far beyond the, here not so frowned upon, socks-and-sandals combination (a thing that a friend of ours has held a multitude of passionate speeches against – little did he know that months later, in Tokyo, the duck and I would witness this so-called ‘fashion sin’ almost daily).
Well, in contrast to some other places around the world, Japanese fashion does have a history of socks in sandals, dating back centuries. Maybe that is why, here, it seems to be okay with the fashion police if you wear any kind of socks with any kind of shoes (including footies that transform peep-toe-shoes into peep-sock-shoes, etc.) and also if you accentuate your business attire with fun striped, polka-dotted, checked, or otherwise excitingly patterned socks – at least that’s what the train ads want to tell us. Don’t even get me started on all the cool socks you can buy here (for example with sushi or vending machine patterns)…!
Therefore, the duck and I have decided to take this Japanese chapter as an opportunity to add to our daring sock collection. But that’s enough blabbering for now.
Thanks for stocking by!