Why I do what I do (be-doo-be-doo)(...sorry)

It's a puzzle for non-knitters. Why do knitters knit dishcloths? And why to knitters knit socks?

You can purchase both commodities at your local Walmart (if, indeed, I shopped at Walmart, which I don't. Did back about five years ago. Since then I've not set foot in one. Ever.) at 54,679 of them for a dollar. Of course they're worth about that much...

Okay. Not always. You can get cheap dishcloths and socks at stores that don't aim to fill our landfills with useless crap, exploit their employees and trade with unethical manufacturers. And they will be functional and you can buy a ton of them.

So why knit them?

On a personal level, I prefer hand knitted socks, since my feet are shaped like squares and I when I buy socks I always have an abundance of toe fabric at the end or the heel is halfway up my leg. And I do prefer the heftiness of a knitted cotton dishcloth.

But that's my personal preference and I realize not everyone appreciates the difference between hand knitted and functional store-bought socks. And that's okay. You like what you like.

I think, though, another reason why I knit these things (other than the fact that I like to knit) is that this is another way of keeping close to the items I use during the day. By putting so much work into this common, everyday household item, I become more mindful of the task I use it for.

It's easy to take silly things like socks and dishcloths for granted. They mean nothing. Throw them away, tear 'em up. Doesn't matter at 54,679 for a dollar. But it matters if you've put a few hours into them and while you knitted you watched a Jane Austen movie and thought about all you've heard about Austen and whether it was true that she recognized the societal hypocrisies of her world or just inadvertently included them in her little romantic story*. Or this sock is the one knitted during as waited for your son to arrive back at school from a track meet so you could take him home.

I think of how many things I wasted because they are so cheap. I can afford paper napkins, paper towels, disposable dust rags and -- and this one really annoys my brother -- plastic straws. (I wash my plastic straws, especially because I usually use them only to drink water. This drives my brother crazy. When he comes over he always tries to throw out my plastic straws while I always try to give him drinks with the rattiest looking straw I can find. What? You were expecting the warm fuzzies?) But I'm slowly weeding them out of our lives because I think we have a responsibility not to use up resources.

And so I knit dishcloths and socks. And I darn socks. And I take more care of them than with the store-bought variety.

*In the movie Sense and Sensibility my favorite line is when Mrs. Jennings asks what is the occupation of the man who was interested in Elinor and Marianne replies, "He has no occupation," to which Mrs. Jennings exclaims, "Oh! Then he's a Gentleman!" This little piece of irony, though, belongs to Emma Thompson, who wrote the screenplay, not to Jane Austen.