Bits of Thread
May, 2010
You have them. You know you do. What do you do with them? Save them, right? Because…..just in case…..the other one shows up, and you want them to match. Stray socks, right? Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.
I have this whole big bundle of them. Each laundry run, I check to see if one of the ‘strays’ has shown up. Occasionally one returns to the fold – you wonder where it went. Did it go traveling inside a pant leg? Or was it firmly attached to the back of your shirt? And no one told you….. But most of the time….I still have my big bundle of lonely stray socks.
So imagine my surprise when I saw a book that provided directions on what to do with your stray socks. It listed fourteen sock animal projects that you could make out of stray socks. So I was really pumped. Since I can’t bear to part with the strays (because you know…..its mate might show up) I might be able to put them to good use…..while we are waiting.
I grabbed my bundle of strays and the book and got to work. Hmmm, the brown and white tweedy sock? Yep…that one is destined to be a small sock monkey. The green trouser sock? How about a caterpillar? The denim one? Hmmm….what kind of animal is denim colored? Maybe that one will stay a stray. Oh, look….there are two brown socks that match – wonder how that happened?
So I do what I can…..still wondering about the denim animal…but now…..what do I do with all these sock animals? Because there are going to be more stray socks – I can just feel it in my bones. Guess what you all are getting for Christmas?
January, 2010
Why do we do it?
Why do we take tiny whisps of fiber, painstakingly feed them through the literal eye of a needle, find teeny holes in fabric to push the needle, all the while counting tiny threads to make sure that we are not ‘off’?
We change colors……then we change fabric…..then we change out parts of the pattern until we are satisfied that this will be the most wonderful piece. We attack these pieces of fabric with a frenzy……until we say enough and drop that prized piece in a bag…..until ‘later’. If we make a mistake – we ‘rippit’ until it is perfect…..to us.
Why do we do it?
I tend to think it is a reflection of our lives. We are creative people, yet most of us work and live in an environment over which we have very little control. If the truth be told, we suffer from the ‘if onlys’ – if only (‘I could do it my way’; ‘I had a new ______’; ‘I had more time/money/people’). All the ‘if onlys’ leaves us with a disconcerting feeling.
With our needlework we sew to our specifications, as perfect as we want and it leaves us with much satisfaction. It is a peaceful oasis in the otherwise frenetic whirlwind we call our lives. We can slow down; we can breathe (both in and out) and we reconnect with ourselves and with others.
Keep on stitching!
