I know that socks and knitting and the making lifestyle is something I talk about all.of.the.time, but I firmly believe that the benefits that we gain from creating cannot be overstated. So I’ll just keep on talking about it here and on my IG and in real life and I’ll keep making and playing and doing, and I hope you will, too.
Being a maker does so many fabulous things for me (and for a lot of you, I’d wager). Being a maker enhances the heck out of my life. And knitting, although arguably the most important part of my makerly life, is not the only making I do. I make a lot of stuff. So much, in fact, that I often find myself resenting it just a bit, and wishing I would just buy the canned beans or the ready-baked bread or the packaged body care products. For the most part, however, the making lifestyle seriously fuels me. It keeps me going and centers me and deepens my life. And knitted socks are the lynchpin of that lifestyle for me, as anyone who has seen me in public or followed me on Instagram likely knows.
I’ve written odes to sock knitting. I’ve waxed melodramatic about them. I’ve immersed myself in a particular pattern time and time again. Back before I started designing full-time, I made other people’s patterns (I remember a Monkey Sock kick, during which I made about 10 pairs of toe-up modified Monkeys). But, since switching to full-time designing, and particularly since publishing my Sundae Socks pattern, it’s been downright ridiculous.
I’ve made 18 pairs of Sundae Socks, by my last count. 19 pairs of Stumptown Socks, with another 2 pairs half-done. 7 pairs of Winter Weekends. 7 pairs of Otherwise Engaged. Five pairs of This Way and That. Five pairs of Short Attention Span… Well, you get the idea. When I get a pattern stuck in my knitterly heart, I just keep on making that pattern. Again and again and again and again.
But, still, why all of the socks? Surely I don’t have a bajillion feet to clothe? And since I mostly just make them for myself, it’s not like there’s a charity component or a gifting component to this sock-knitting obsession. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a lot of things (and talking about them here on the blog), and, since I’m talking self-love and acceptance, I can’t NOT talk about the soul-feeding that knitting provided.
Sock knitting makes me feel good. Like, really, really good. It’s knitting I can do while doing other things. It’s a fabulous excuse to use all of the gorgeous sock yarns I see out there (but, if we’re being serious, I haven’t made socks with much other than Knitted Wit’s Victory Sock in the past few years, because it’s really the best sock yarn out there). It’s making at its very most soul-feeding. And I love it. And I’m going to do so much more of it. And I’m likely going to make oodles and oodles of pairs of my upcoming Socks for Busy B’s 3 collection. And the vast majority of them will likely be for myself.
What is your go-to, gotta-make, soul-feeding item? Is it knitting? Baking bread? Making jam? Share it with me, please, and maybe I’ll get obsessed with it too!
Comments
I agree with you Shannon. Sock knitting definitely feeds my soul! I rarely make them for anyone else, and I live in a climate where it’s too warm for at least half the year to even wear them. But that doesn’t matter because, like you, I fall in love with all the colorful yarns and just enjoy the process of making them into beautiful socks. I also prefer to bake desserts instead of buying them, so the Hubz and Kiddo get homemade cookies in their lunches. The baking does go on hiatus in the summer, however. I’m not turning on the oven when it’s over 100 degrees outside!
I love the whole making thing. I love to bake sourdough bread and cook (sometimes. Other times I abhor cooking – go figure, eh?) Creating something and then enjoying that thing is soul food.