Knitting Brings Quiet...

This weekend finds me at our local race track, watching as CG races in the rain...  My usual home on Wheels AKA "Petunia" sits at home, unable to start, (we think she needs a new battery)...  So I sit in  the cab of our truck and try to feel the quiet and peace like I enjoy when we travel with Petunia...

I pulled out some rich Kiwi green yarn that I'd brought with me and began to knit a toasty shawl for the cooler weather.   Once again I discover what profound and therapeutic effects working (creating) with colors can have on my temperament.  The repetition of the gently clicking needles and the beautiful colored  yarn passing in, over, through, off, puts me in a state of quiet relaxation, almost meditation... whilst in the background I hear the sound of cars careering  around corners and screeching their tires in an effort to stay on the track in the deluge of rain.  Its good to be warm, its good to be dry...

I discovered this poem I'd like to share by Pablo Neruda.  I love how his words sweetly describe the specialness of being given a pair of hand knitted socks, that are "as soft as two rabbits..."

Ode To My Socks ~ by Pablo Neruda

(Translated by Robert Bly)

Mara Mori brought me

a pair of socks

which she knitted herself

with her sheepherder's hands,

two socks as soft as rabbits.

I slipped my feet into them

as though into two cases

knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin.

Violent socks,

my feet were two fish made of wool

two long sharks

sea blue, shot through

by one golden thread,

two immense blackbirds,

two cannons,

my feet were honored in this way

by these heavenly socks.

They were so handsome for the first time

my feet seemed to me unacceptable

like two decrepit fireman,

firemen unworthy of that woven fire,

of those glowing socks.

Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation

to save them somewhere as schoolboys

keep fireflies,

as learned men collect

sacred texts,

I resisted the mad impulse to put them

in a golden cage and each day give them

birdseed and pieces of pink melon.

Like explorers in the jungle

who hand over the very rare green deer

to the spit and eat it with remorse,

I stretched out my feet and pulled on

the magnificent socks and then my shoes.

The moral of my ode is this:

beauty is twice beauty,

and what is good is doubly good

when it is a matter of two socks

made of wool in winter.