The agreeable eye

an eudæmonistarchives

inventio

Diagram of a German knitted stocking heel

Unfortunately I have forgotten how to turn a heel. The men make an effort to help me out with this. In desperation we unravel one sock after another in an attempt to fathom the mystery of the stitch. What makes it worse is that grandmothers in the north knit differently from Germans. There is great agitation. With beads of sweat on their brows and swearing horribly, holding the thin needles in their heavy hands, the men try with a kind of lunatic fervour to invent new knitting patterns for socks. My husband works according to a complicated system constructed on a geometrical formula, while Karl simply and happily knits long tubes pulled together at one end.

—Christiane Ritter (A Woman in the Polar Night, trans. Jane Degras, 53%)


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ego hoc feci mm–MMXXIV · cc 2000–2024 M.F.C.