Dad's Socks

I haven't knitted an inch since childhood, though I'd like to take it up again. I have lambs' wool waiting for such a mission up in the loft, a carefully stored treasure trove of inspiring color. Every fleece is different in hue and texture and crimp...and I can remember which lamb or ewe or ram the locks came from without having to label them. Out in the fields each summer, the fleece still on the sheeps' backs, I often run my fingers through the curls and imagine knitted and woven and felted things I want it to become.

When I was very small I was fascinated watching my dad create the diamond patterns and "turn the heels" of argyle socks. He spent months making a few pairs. They were then sent off in the mail to his brothers at Christmas time. He had learned to knit from their Scotch mother, Bethia Maxwell. I loved to sit on the arm of his chair, watching. He quietly and patiently let me study his concentrated work and touch the stitches. I learned best that way anyway, without too much in the way of words to clutter my study. I eventually learned to hold the awkward, small "sticks" and get a feel for the give and take of the yarn. I believe I learned to count, add and multiply by knitting.

It was startling, this concept that a long strand of simple twisted wool could be twiddled and manipulated, knotted essentially, to come up with something precise and useful. Since a pair of men's socks could be purchased from Woolworth's for maybe a dollar at the time, the realization was clear, even to a small child, that this effort of brotherly sock production was really something. It had not dawned on me then (though it would come with time) that my dad was a different sort of man altogether to be knitting in the '50's. But it was not lost on me that those socks were über special and communicated to the receiving uncles a deep and kind bond. It was a visible, tangible showing of love that their middle brother would expend such care on this creative and "slow in the making" gift. Especially so given the meaningful connection, the intertwining of ancestral "ties," behind the argyle patterns.

This winter, thinking of Dad's sock effort, I've collaborated with an enthusiastic and exquisitely talented knitter who has taken a slog of my fleeces and transformed their raw beauty and natural color tenderly into useful garments.

Dad would be pleased with my continuing love for knitting. And his Scotch "waste not, want not" ethic and his love for natural materials to be made "useful" would shine though.