s(t)ockpile

Is it time for me to move on from knitting socks?

These are some - but by no means all - of the socks I have knitted.

Seeing them altogether, I’m quite fascinated to see just how many socks I’ve made, the yarns I’ve used, the colours, patterns, repeats on repeat, circle after circle of stripes. I knit lots of socks them because I enjoy knitting them, because they are now so easy, and because I can talk/drink tea/watch TV or a film at the same time as knitting. They don’t require any finishing and, if you’re lucky, there are only four ends to sew in. I always have a sock on the go on four bamboo needles and I knit most evenings. I barely have to look at what I’m doing now, a bit like my Nana who could knit and read at the same time but ended up with jumper sleeves down to the ground (I like to imagine she was reading Dorothy Whipple novels borrowed from the library). I’d love to be able to do that; I could measure books by the number of socks knitted to pages read. War and Peace or A la recherche du temps perdu would yield a whole new drawerful of socks.

[current knitting]

Now, though, I feel I’m almost at the end of the options for self-striping yarns, having knitted most of the colour combinations I like best. I see no point in knitting anything dull or dark or unobvious because they’d just look like bought socks. So I’m always searching for yarns in bright mixes or someone’s favourite colour in a cleverly designed pattern. My preferred sock yarn website is Sockenwolle Paradies but when I get to the checkout and am reminded that I now live in a non-EU country it always makes me want to howl. In the summer, I had four exciting yarns delivered to the place we were staying in Sweden, but now I’ve knitted those I’m on the look-out for interesting yarns closer to home. I actually prefer the cheaper, hard-wearing commercial ones to the very nice, very expensive, but not as excitingly self-striping hand-dyed yarns which are triple the price.

[personal stockpile]

So recently, while knitting, I have found myself thinking about bigger needles, single-colour yarns, different textures and thicknesses, Fair Isle, cables, yokes, sleeves, jumpers, hats. I’ve got a little store of patterns on Ravelry ready and waiting, but it’s been such a long time since I knitted anything other than socks that I’m easily frightened/put off by anything that says ‘long-tail cast on’ or ‘knitted from the top down’ or includes the verb ‘to steek’. I can only cast on the way my Mum showed me, the one time I tried a top-down pattern it ended in tears and nine out of ten balls being put away somewhere I couldn’t see them and be reminded of my failure, and the idea of taking a pair of scissors to my knitting just strikes me a a huge risk/act of vandalism. (Having said that, I’m wondering whether I could use some of the damaged socks in the s(t)ockpile in a rag rug, and thus recycle them to keep feet warm in a different way…)

Maybe, then, I am stuck forever in one of the circles that Dante did not include, the never-ending circle of sock-knitting. Not the worst circle of hell, by a long shot.

Happy Sunday!