Sticks and yarn, twisting and looping and wrapping into stitches and rows, transform the linear into the three dimensional–a thin stand of wool into a thick pair of socks. The instructions for a sock are cryptic: knit, pearl, slip, turn, make, drop, join. Reading through the steps, the process doesn’t seem to make sense.
I had wanted to make socks for a long time. I learned the basic knitting stitch when I was a little girl. My mother gave me two fat plastic knitting needles and some yarn, put a dozen or so loops on the first needle for me and showed me how to slip the point of the other needle through a loop, wrap the yarn around the point and pull it back through to create a knit stitch.
Clumsy at first, soon I was knitting back and forth, turning out long lacy folds of fabric, an intricate pattern of dropped-stitch holes and uneven, added-stitch edges. When I was tired of it, or out of yarn, she would knit my creation off the needles and I would have a scarf, a doll blanket, or a cape. I marveled at what I could create, something from nothing.
In a cold climate and on a tight budget many years later, the idea of creating something out of almost nothing appealed to me. I took a class to learn how to knit mittens. I learned how to cast on stitches, knit around in circles to create the cylinder of the mitten, and bind off. Everyone on my Christmas list received mittens that year. I loved each pair, the yarn, the colors, and the different sizes, from toddler to adult. I was a happy, confident knitter.
Looking around the yarn shop, though, I began to long for more. A sweater? Too big of a commitment. Socks? Perfect. But the heel! Fearful, I stuck with scarves and the occasional replacement mitten. I thought about making tube socks, basically a long mitten with no thumb, to warm the feet instead of the hands. That would be easier, but the call of real, shaped-heel socks lingered in my mind.
Occasionally, I asked other knitters about the heel experience. Most agreed they were too timid to attempt the turning of the heel. Then, I got an answer that bolstered my courage. Just follow the directions, she said. They don’t make sense when you read them, but if you just do it, row by row, the heel, mysteriously, almost miraculously, turns into that cup shape that makes it a real sock. This new courage, combined with abandoning my attempts to seem like a savvy knitter to the yarn shop employees, took me into my local knit shop with one bold question: Do you have a really easy sock pattern?
She did, and her own experience confirmed the wisdom of giving up trying to visualize how it would work. I was a woman obsessed. Most of the next day I was knitting around in circles toward the heel. Then, it was time. Checking and re-checking the pattern, I knit each row carefully, doing what it said even though it felt wrong. Turn and start knitting in the other direction before I get to the end of the row? I was almost holding my breath, knitting, turning, pearling, knitting two together, slip-slip-knitting, turning some more.
And then, there it was: the heel cup. It was true, it worked. And it didn’t take any advanced skills. I showed everyone and I posted it as my status on FaceBook. I was so proud of myself. Only a few people truly rejoiced with me. Many, who never cared about making a sock, were puzzled by my excitement, but I didn’t care. I had socks to knit.
There it was again, something from nothing. Something useful and beautiful had come from my fingers and some sticks and some yarn combined in their ancient dance. These socks, my little creations, didn’t actually come from nothing, though. The expense, it’s true, was minimal. I already had the wool and the needles, and the directions, copied on one sheet of paper, were cheap. Creativity wasn’t there in measurable amounts, either. I simply took my place in a long line of sock knitters and did what has been done countless times before.
I did use my time, my effort–the doing of it. I added some faith in the directions, and got the satisfaction of seeing the transformation of yarn to socks and the joy of my success. Still this effort doesn’t seem like art. Not the type to be observed, to be hung in a gallery and understood as message or a representation. It is just a useful item, a pair of socks to be worn and washed and worn out. But the joy of creating was there. In this broader definition, our whole lives can be art–the effort, the fear, the faith, the going in circles, the satisfaction and joy, and finally, the wearing and the wearing out is beautiful.
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