I've never had much success with handmade socks (although other people are always terribly impressed that you can engineer such a *complicated* object at all, so they make acceptable gifts...) I have foot/circulation problems, and walking on a coarse-knit woollen sock is like having tram tracks under your soles :-(

I used to save up my pocket-money for books when I was little; it took three weeks to afford the average paperback. Then I very rapidly discovered that you could get multiple second-hand books from jumble sales for *one* week's pocket-money (even now I am rarely prepared to pay more than a pound or so to acquire a book!)