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Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Art and socks

My husband's socks ALL look like the socks on the left and right.


Of all the hateful household tasks in the world, at the top of the list must be matching socks after doing laundry, folding or rolling them, and putting them away.

It's not difficult with my socks; I have socks in probably every colour except red. I even have purple socks. And some soylent green ones, although I do have three very similar pairs of black socks.

Kiddie--or artist?--socks

But my husband has only black socks. Well, except for the four dark blue ones and two brown.

And that's where art and socks intersect.

All his black socks are from only two manufacturers. One kind has a gold stripe woven into the toe; the other kind does not.

The socks were not all purchased at the same time. Thus, they have not all been washed the same number of times. Thus the dye has not faded to the same shade in all of them. Thus one cannot just grab two black socks with gold stripes and put them together. The dark blue socks further complicate matters, as they appear, at times, to be almost as dark as the more faded of the plain black socks.

I'm getting a headache....




More like stockings....but knitted like socks
I suspect Simon could just match up any two stripe-less socks and any two with the gold stripe, because he simply wouldn't care. After all, he would reason, they'll be hidden by trousers, mainly.  But for me, they must be an actual pair...or as close to it as the naked eye--an artist's eye, trained in seeing subtle tonal gradations--can manage.

It's a thankless task. I'm never sure whether to let the laundry pile up so I only have to do it about every ten days, at which point there are at least 20 matchable socks to deal with or more if he has done something like lawn-mowing and gotten a pair smelly halfway through a day, or more often so there are fewer socks.

Nor can the sock-matching be done in dim light, so I can't leave it for after dinner, even now when the sun is up until 9. I could drag it all into my studio, where the things that saves my sanity for painting, a pair of high-wattage full-spectrum lights, would help. But then I'd risk getting blotches of paint on all those black socks.

Corporation man socks.

Wait. This is a good idea. A tiny blot of cadmium yellow hue on one pair, some lovely Winsor Red on another, maybe some Naples Yellow on another, and so on. I could even mark the Gold Stripe socks on the stripe with green or blue.

I doubt Simon would notice. He didn't notice when the coppery red hair I had when we met had turned to dark brown before we got married, a period of about eight months. And he's a bit far-sighted, so it's unlikely he'd notice a couple of colourful dabs on his socks unless he happened to be wearing his reading glasses when he got dressed. Which will never happen.

Art and socks are much better bedfellows than I first imagined; I really intended to write about appropriate socks for artists. But as it turns out, bringing a little artistry to the socks of engineers turned out to be more valuable, at least to me.

Now, if someone can tell me how to prevent sock disappearance....so I don't end up with one purple sock with the mate turning up some weeks later from some mystical hidey hole in the laundry room....

Handmade granny socks?

(All sock photos Wiki Commons)

1 comment:

Anthony said...

You match his socks? My husband just shoves them all in my drawer!