Before and After Socks

Every project has a story behind it.  Some have multiple stories.  The Solaris Shawl that I knit last year had a bit of baseball in it, as well as an entire train ride across the country and back, weaving pieces of home and away, as well as the past and the present with the future.  It took me months to complete with all the involved stitches, short rows, counting and counting, backing out, starting over.  In the end I gifted it, and sent all the pieces of me that went into it along with it.

Socks are fairly easy for me these days and if I'm able to work consistently I can finish a pair within two weeks.  And I use the same pattern for every new pair, so the only time I really need to read the pattern is when I turn the heel.  Even then I'm getting closer to having that part memorized.

This pair was different.  I started these in July and just finished them ten minutes ago.  October 11th.  Four months.  I've not really knit otherwise in that time.  An easy, basic scarf and one cowl that took me two nights to finish, using a local, handspun yarn, was an easy and quick knit.  A good distraction from these socks, as they have been the least enjoyable and hardest thing I've ever knit, including my first sweater and the Solaris Shawl.

The yarn was gifted to me, and I loved the colorway.  I'm a blue person after all (and no, that metaphor isn't lost on me either). As I started to knit these, I was reminded of Van Gogh's Starry Night.  It was like the socks twinkled.  Weaving the dark pink tones of a setting sun into the deep violet-cerulean sky.  I fall in love with the sky every time I look at it.  Even on overcast days where the air hangs so ominously, I can still find an appreciation for what I know is there.

The night my mother was rushed to the hospital, I took my knitting with me, which I do often.  I don't typically go anywhere that I may have to spend time sitting without having a project with me.  I barely touched it.  And during the next 12 days I spent with her, I knit barely a dozen rows.  Something that could take me five minutes to do in a normal place, I couldn't even touch.

At the end of those 12 days, and subsequently, her life, I wanted to name these socks "Death Socks". I didn't want to touch them again and I had no desire to ever finish them and put them on my feet. I wanted to rip them out. I wanted to throw them in the trash. I wanted to finish them and then burn them.  I still kind of want to destroy them, in a therapeutic way.

I'm not sure if it's noticeable to anyone elses eyes, but one sock is different than the other.  The tones are just slightly off.  Like something is missing.  Like something that was there when I crafted the first one was completely gone for the second.  And that is the story that these socks will always hold.