Haven't heard back from hubby yet, but given the weather I'm sure he likes them; I warned him they were not oversocks but these days he has to wear dress shoes anyway and I told him it takes a long time to hand knit socks for those. I do have some of the yarns (80 wool/20 acrylic blends) but I can only work on tiny needles for so long, even with the new methods I've learned using two round needles it still gets painful after awhile. So a switch to things he can wear in his dorm and at home seemed a good idea for this season; along with some thermal style dress socks that he already has from the store (and heavy boots I got him at a charity chops that he could even wear these with if he needed too). Dublin is less prone to snow being on the East Coast of Ireland but when it does get walloped it can be big; we were in a blizzard there three years ago and it looked like Denver on a snow day.
For a few years there, grabbing a sheep, or rather fleeces was the only way to get wool weaving yarn here; there was one mill Black Water Abby that got a grant from the Government but when I called them it was their cousin the US selling the yarn and they wouldn't sell directly to me - and I declined to order from the US. I even wrote the cousin about that issue but never heard back, now they do sell some yarn here but not locally; and there are a couple of the old weaving mills that operate mostly as tourist attractions (again government/EU grants) that have started producing knitting yarn. This is mostly what I use in terms of wool yarn, I order it from Springwools in Dublin who I point out will mail for the same low price, pretty much all over the world and have reasonable prices for what is on offer. That said, 80 to 90 percent of their yarns are still blends or simply acrylics, because they know their regular customers just can't afford wool at the current prices, at least not to keep them going all the time. They love me, I wait until expenses are caught up and order their big cones and balls from the wool mills; along with a brand of Aran wool from the UK that is softer than the local Irish yarns.
I still use my spinning wheel but I am delighted to not have to totally rely on it/them; most of the yarn I get from local sheep (which are meat sheep) is somewhat course; you can make nice hats out of it and scarves; I managed one sweater but used a mix of wool I had spun from US sheep. I think I may have knit a second one a long time ago, but husband is really hard on clothing and I think he wore it one season and then it got moth eaten (if I don't find them, they get left in odd places like outbuildings and become cat beds). That's another reason I prefer not to hand-spin his garments because he is just genetically incapable of caring for them (MIL says FIL is the same way lol). So I keep the hand-spun for myself or smaller items for him that I don't care so much what happens to them.
Right now, I am making a lovely piece that is supposed to be a wide scarf - it is the Norwegian Snow Flake pattern from Ravelry, I had to go down to a size 2 needle to get anything approaching gage (it is supposed to be a US 5) but many people reported the scarves as being way to wide- at this point I've just got pretty darn wide - not sure what will happen when I get passed the patterned part - people reported great boredom but I was actually looking for a project I could do the fancy stuff on and get it out of the way and then have for "boring" knitting during meetings, watching TV etc. I can do "boring" knitting without looking at it, especially in the round. I have not yet decided if I want to knit the two plain sections at the same time or do the pattern suggested one side and then the other; I do intend to knit both "ends" of pattern on the same needle so I know they are exactly the same size - then I'll see.
Finally I hate sketchy instructions! The Siberian slippers drove me nuts until I figured them out, they are wonderful slippers but at eight dollars the pattern is one of the most expensive at Ravelry and it is I'm sorry, very poorly written for that price. But because it is copywrited the best I could do was post "notes" for people on my project report; someone else did another version using a different bottom of the foot; I gather the idea has been around Siberia and Russia for several hundred years but I actually like the foot bottom on this one better. The free pattern that you can get on Ravelry uses pretty much an EZ (Elizabeth Zimmerman) "retread" or "moccasin" foot, which I love the idea for but always slipped on my feet; this foot bottom does not do that.
