This pair, is not identical. I don't make too much effort to have identical self-striping socks, if I'm being honest, they almost always appear to match to the casual observer. When you take the little tubies and put them on your real, meaty legs, there's shoes and possibly pants involved. Maybe some walking and other activities...people are only really getting glimpses of the socks in question. They have the same colors and apparently the same stripes, nobody's going to question.
But this pair has a little history, so this pair matches even less than normal.
I try to live in the reality where seasons of life come and go and accept it. Might even say radical acceptance of it, if that phrase didn't make me grit my teeth so hard. In the season of life where I originally cast on the first sock of this pair, my family of origin loved me and valued me for myself and my skills. And to that end, when someone lamented the lack of handknit cotton socks, I thought...I could do that.
She wanted me to show her how I made them, and I did, even though I knew she wouldn't remember. She had clear signs of memory loss then, and it's bittersweet how clearly I remember trying desperately to get anyone to listen to me about the changes happening for her.
But I made that sock and I have carried it with me, made to fit another person's foot.
In this season of life, I've been rather materially abandoned by my family of origin. There are a lot of reasons, but much of it is wrapped up in inter-generational trauma, that old chestnut.
I thought about making the second sock exactly the same and mailing it out, without a return address. Maybe that would be a fitting send-off to this small leftover from the tie we shared. But then what, there's no metaphor there that suits me. There's a lot of little bits I carry around from the ties that I thought bound me to people that loved me. Shall I cast them off?
Anyway, I ripped the sock back to where I started the heel and decided to add a bit more length, and turn the heel again. But it was too short still. So I ripped again, and knit again. And ripped again, and knit again. I think I still made it a little too short for myself, but it fits alright and I'll wear the pair.
The reason they don't match is that when I made the new version to suit myself, it needed more yarn, so I've got an extra join and a misplaced stripe in one of the socks. It's okay, growth needs a bit of room and a bit of misplaced stuff, right? At the end of the day I'll be visibly a bit worn and mended, but still fitting, still made to be what I need for myself, and for my family by choice. I don't know, perhaps it is a bit forced to find all this symbolized in a pair of silly striped socks, but I felt some of it leave me while I was knitting these. All the mess and rejection knit into the stitches and less tangled into my own brain.
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