Johanna Gardner is the proprietor of Trollhaugen Farm. Her dispatch from the farm recounting the ups and downs of lambing season appeared in these pages in 2022.
Last night, I sat down to struggle through "turning the heel."
This sounds like some form of torture, and indeed it is, but probably not what you imagine it to be. There is no prisoner getting his foot wrenched in directions it was not intended to go, forced to spill highly sought information of great importance to national security.
No, turning the heel is a banal bit of knitting most human beings unintentionally touch the product of daily, if you have at least one functional foot and you wear socks. Given that it is winter as I write this, that would be most everyone in the Northeast.
My saving grace, if you want to call it that, is that I grew up with parents who expected me to be above average and to work hard at all things I tackled; thus, I am capable of focusing and working through tasks that might discourage others.
This is certainly true of all knitters: This craft or "hobby" is not for the faint of heart.
Like sewing, one needs the skills of a carpenter, but in an enhanced version. These include an ability to measure, attach, cut, untangle, decipher patterns with unbelievably complex code words for tiny little movements performed with needles, and envision the final product.
But unlike in carpentry, in knitting and sewing every material you work with is slippery, has a bias, can move even after you have attached it to other pieces, and has personality.
Yes, yarn has its own agenda, as do most fabrics. And these need to be considered when you embark on a project.
* * *
I used to knit when I was in my 20s, before I had children. One sweater took me two years to complete, simply because I was traveling and living life in between working on it.
I sewed constantly, too: clothing, curtains, mattress covers, all kind of things. Some were wildly successful; others, not so much.
There is a fair amount of crashing and burning when learning to knit and sew. In the end, I had no patience for the amount of time and money I spent, and the outcome, which often fit poorly, left me frustrated.
So I stopped. I stopped knitting for over 30 years.
* * *
But then, once my kids got a little older, I bought some sheep. Here's where things got really interesting.
When sheep entered my world, everything flipped on its head. I lost all control over my life.
Fencing, hoof care, breeding, rams and subsequently bad knees (mine, not the rams'), giving shots and dewormer, being up at 2 a.m. to check if a lamb was being born.
I became an obstetrician, a mortician, a dietician - it's all there, it all tumbled down on my head.
A rich and exciting series of new experiences, all because I decided to get what I hoped would be a flock of new and improved lawn mowers.
* * *
Meanwhile, the downstream effect of getting sheep has been to rekindle my interest in the skill of knitting. Because now my new lawn mowers also produce wool. Suddenly, there's wool everywhere. Bags of it. Beautiful wool in all kinds of colors: I had to come up with a way to use it.
Reluctantly, I accepted that this knitting thing that I thought I was done with was going to be resurrected. I dove into the deep end of the pool: I spent $1,700 just to get some yarn made from my wool. I acquired a loom and two spinning wheels.
And I am finding that while I remember the basics, knitting demands that you screw your hands and fingers up with strings leading off in all directions, small wooden or metal slippery double-ended sticks that happily slide away when you least expect them to...leaving behind empty loops - of tantamount importance to completion of the task at hand - that need to be recaptured and coerced into cooperation.
I needed to work on my skills pretty seriously to get back in the saddle.
* * *
The good news is that I am not drawn to complex patterns in knitting. I like stripes and solids.
Being of Norwegian background, I grew up surrounded by Norwegian sweaters with some of the most complex patterns I have ever seen. My aunts and mother were all expert knitters, throwing off gorgeous sweaters with seemingly effortless speed.
But the amazing patterns they made never really appealed to me.
I am perfectly happy with stripes: I guess I am more of a Pippi Longstocking than I like to admit.
While I still bristle when I remember how I was taunted at age 9 by Norwegian boys for looking just like Pippi, with my red hair in braids walking through the town of Drøbak, where my grandparents lived, I always loved those striped red and white socks.
I guess it is time to accept that persona; after all, Pippi certainly seems pretty cool to me at this point in my life.
I wonder if Pippi ever had sheep?
* * *
So here I sit, having listened about 10 times to the same YouTube presentation on how to turn the heel, and, by Jove, I think I have it!
I hold my work out at arm's length to see how the decreasing of my stitches has gone off and - even though I began with an uneven number of stitches, which for a perfectionist would be unacceptable - I am beyond getting hung up on such details.
The heel looks great!
I turn my sock around and around, and I consider getting that self-congratulatory glass of chardonnay the video recommends after completing this challenging step.
But no, I still need to pick up stitches and get on with my sock … we are far from done, folks!
But at least tonight I can feel proud for having passed through this step for the first, but hopefully not the last, time in this new year of 2024.
This Voices Essay was submitted to The Commons.