TURNING HEELS
Knitting is never "just a hobby." It might start out that way; however, it quickly grows into much more. Even the most casual of knitters will admit that knitting is a welcome distraction or Zenlike experience that transports them away from the daily grind. For others, knitting grants them the opportunity to participate in the Jungian archetype of creative art. The ability to take two sticks and some thread, add color, texture, style, and innovation to create something both lovely and useful produces great satisfaction. Some knitters love the escapism, some love the finished product, others thrive on the process itself. Knitting is enjoyed by the casual practitioner as well as professional knitters, designers, publishers, and technical editors.
Yet, I wonder. Have you ever considered knitting as a metaphor for life?
Consider sock knitting. Socks continue to be among the most popular handknit items. No wonder. The sheer selection available in sock yarns today is phenomenal—colors, fiber content, hand wash or machine wash, bling or conservative. Then there are a multitude of textures, cables, laces, stripes, mosaics, and intarsia. If you chose to knit only socks from now on, you would not get bored. Yet the single most significant reason for knitters to make handknit socks is the fit. For those who have never experienced it, wearing a pair of handknit socks made just for you is beyond description. It is all in the fit!
The easiest socks to knit are tube socks. These are knit as a straight tube from top to toe. You just cast on stitches and knit around in a spiral until the sock is as long as you want. Then, depending on whether you knitted toe up or cuff down, either close the toe or bind off the top edge. Tube socks are easy, quick, and fashionable.
Yet, in spite of their popularity and simplicity, I don't make them. I prefer standard socks with heels even though they are more complicated to construct. Why? Because tube socks just don't fit. The anatomy they are created to cover is not a long, straight tube. Our ankles and feet form a 90 degree angle with our legs. Since tube socks are straight, they don't work well with our anatomy. They scrunch up in front of the ankle, stretch out at he back of the heel, and bunch up inside our shoes. In short, to knit a sock that truly fits, I need to turn the heel.
Turning the heel is not a simple matter. I must, somehow, convince my straight tube to turn in another direction. Numerous methods have been developed throughout the ages. Many of them involve short row techniques such as wrap and turn, German short rows, Japanese short rows, and yarn over short rows. There are also several heel styles, many of which use the above short rows—standard short row heels, short row heels with gussets, heel flaps with gussets, Fleegle heels, widdershen heels. Then there are afterthought heels, forethought heels, heels shaped like toes, hats, stars, even sweet tomato heels. Although turning the heel can be complicated, the turning is worth the effort. Because once it is done, the sock fits!
And this is where the life metaphor comes in. You thought you had everything figured out for that tube sock. That robin's egg blue color is just perfect for the simple lace and cable pattern. The size feels right around your foot. A stretchy bind-off at the calf is comfortable but doesn't sag. Yet something is just not right. There are no heels. The socks hurt your feet. You just cannot walk around in these socks anymore. They don’t fit.
Life is like that. Sometimes something just doesn't fit. Maybe you are downright uncomfortable on the path you are currently walking. Nothing is going the way you hoped or wanted or needed. What if the problem is that you are not moving in the right direction? Maybe what you need is to turn the heel. Take a lesson from knitting socks. Sometimes we need to change our direction. And like heel turns, there is an entire world of options. That is the beauty of knitting. There are so many wonderful possibilities for change. One day you might prefer plain vanilla tube socks. The next day, you absolutely need heavily beaded, gusseted socks with lots of bling. Or maybe, you just want to spend time exploring the processes and inventing your own style.
Handknit socks and life are all about investigating the possibilities and making the choices that make us feel comfortable, happy, creative, and productive. Here is to well-fitting socks and a well-fitting life.