socks

socks are knit on big fat lion brand yarn called amazing. the color scheme, a self striping blue and gray, is called olympia. the pattern is a sock pattern i found online called "simplest sock pattern ever". and it is.

we are sitting in the vet's office, the sweetie and me. we are waiting for an x-ray of the small dog who may or may not have tangled up his skeleton on a trip through the car wash last week. he hates the car wash, hates it enough to fling his whole body, harnessed and seatbelted, furiously at the water showering against the windows. over and over. snarling. so we are waiting. the sweetie is leafing through books about dogs and i am knitting.

a woman sitting on the same long bench a space or two down from us asks me what i'm making. "pants," i tell her. "for a baby." i steel myself against the inevitable. a woman whose last foray into childbirth was long enough ago she remembers her own children as springing fullgrown from her body. size 12 husky. i wait for her to say what every single one of them says. "a human baby? that will never be big enough for a human baby. maybe it's for a dog." they say this with a snicker, the women who have had children and should know how tiny a human baby is when it first breathes. they always say this. so i tense up, waiting for her to tell me i'm wasting my time. but instead she says, cheerily, "i knit socks."

this is fantastic. i have just learned to knit socks. certainly i have made socks in the past, just like i was at the wheel of a car long before i had a driver's license. but there is a difference between doing something once and knowing how to do something. so i am particularly proud of myself and gush on about how i've just mastered the art of sock making, how much i love making them. she extends her foot a bit, pulls up a pant leg and shows a delicate, ornately stitched sock. i can tell from where i sit it is knit on the tiniest needles in the world. there are millions of stitches and endless secrets in these things. "i make all my own socks!" she says proudly. i am envious. she knows it. she is basking in the glory of the jealousy of another knitter. "i would love to make all my own socks," i say. but i am proud of myself for learning something new and i tell my secret, how i managed to tolerate all those stitches. "i love knitting them up fast so i use chunky yarn on big needles!"

and the needle drags itself across the record in an agonizing screech. she looks at me like i smell bad. she looks at me like i've said an awful word. now, for most of you this means nothing, but if you knit you know there's something called sock yarn. that's right. yarn just for making socks. it's skinny. delicate. the thickness of dental floss or the hair of an angel. think fine print in yarn form. it requires tiny needles and endless stitching. i have just admitted to filling up one of those dotted-lined big chief tablets with the scribblings of the extra fat crayons and then passing it off as a painstakingly crafted novel. i am a charlatan. i am a liar. i am not a knitter of socks. i am a shame.

but this morning early i put on my socks and then put on mary janes so the variegated yarn, the fat, fat yarn in big looping stitches, is clearly visible. i stroll proudly in to work and wave my feet around at every teacher i see. they are not knitters. they are not sock snobs or yarn snobs. and they say exactly what they should, what i want to hear. "those are awesome socks!" and no matter what that miserable woman with the tiny needles and anemic yarn says, i love my socks and will make more. simple and loopy and fat like kindergarten crayon on a big chief.