THOSE Knee Socks

It's not very often that the people in my life agree to allow me to knit something for them. And, when I do decide to knit something as a gift, I expect it to be worn, not put away in the closet and saved for "nice". Mom's a prime example. I've knitted I don't know how many items for her, and she doesn't wear them. She's perpetually cold, so last year for Christmas, I knitted her a really pretty (if I do say so myself) shrug. So she could sit in her chair in the evenings (or during the day) with her shrug around her shoulders and a blanket on her lap, and be warm. Does she wear it? NOOOOOOOO! "It falls off my shoulders," she says. I told her that she sits in a chair, what does she does that makes it fall off???? She just shrugs and mumbles "well, it does."
So, when the kidlet said she'd wear a pair of socks I knitted for her, I was thrilled. She liked the Tabi socks pattern (the one with the separate big toe) and she wanted knee socks and she wanted them in her school colors (I think we finally decided turquoise & black). Ok, I'm good with that - but do you have any idea how difficult it is to find solid color sock yarn? With all the wonderful new stripe designs (which I TOTALLY love, BTW), it's almost impossible. I mentioned in a previous post that we found some solid black and that she found some Koigu KPPPM that has enough turquoise (among the other blues) that she declared herself happy.
I've been knitting ONE SOCK forever! No one told me how long it would take to knit knees socks - especially from the toe up. I'm used to doing sock the "regular" way - top down, and when you've done the heel, you're almost done. A few rounds of stocking knit (after the instep) and then the decreases for the toes, the kitchener, and you're done! But working from the toe up, you get the "hard" (exciting) part out of the way first, then it's endless hours and hours and hours of stocking knit. Today, I finally finished the first knee sock - but when I did the bind-off, it was too tight, so I'm going to have to figure out a different bind off - this has to go over the calf (the fattest part of the leg) and still stay up. I did about 2" off 2x2 ribbing, and I think that's going to give it the firmness I think it needs - but I've got to figure out that whole bind-off thing. I'm open to suggestions. First I'm going to try a crochet bind-off, if that doesn't work, I'm pretty much stumped.