There's a sort of magic to knitting socks. You wrap yarn around sticks, add a few stitches and take away a few more. Voila! You have a sock. It's hard to believe it works.
Even Nancy Bush, who has taught knitting for more than a decade and wrote a book on knitting socks, considers creating a sock a sort of miracle."If you've never done it, it's a bit of a mystery," she says. "But once you get started, you find it's all very logical. But it's still magic."
The miracle of knitting a sock is similar to Nancy's own success story. At first it may seem a mystery how Nancy went from a college graduate not sure what to do with a degree in art history to a successful small-business owner with a published book. But, when you look at the details, it all seems quite logical.
After graduating from the University of Utah, Nancy went to Sweden to learn to weave. Once there, she picked up knitting.
Back in Utah, working at Waking Owl Books, 208 S. 1300 East, she continued to knit. In 1980 on her boss's suggestion and with her parents' support, she opened a knitting store, The Wooly West, in the same building.
Meanwhile, she continued to knit and contribute articles to Knitters, a knitting magazine.
Six years later as part of a Scottish folk dance group, Bush noticed that the leggings of a Scottish bagpiper were knit. She checked to see if they were hand knit. They weren't, so she decided to knit a pair herself.
This was the beginning of her interest in socks. Soon Nancy, who had been teaching knitting at the University of Utah since 1981, was teaching her students to knit socks, but she had no book to refer them to, so she decided to write one herself.
Since Bush's book, "Folk Socks: The History and Techniques of Hand Knitted Foot Wear," was published last November, it has been printed three times and become one of Interweave Press's best sellers. Only a book on garlic sells more than "Folk Socks."
Part of the book's appeal is that it is steeped in history. The first socks, says Bush, were grasses stuffed into leather shoes. Few people realize, she says, that knitting, an art form famous for its Scandinavian sweaters, originated in the Middle East.
Along with history, the book has instructions on how to knit 18 original folk socks. Several people have told Bush that they've learned to knit socks from her book.
Knitting is very big in America, according to Bush, who teaches classes at knitting conferences across the country. "People need to have some craft or skill in their live that isn't electronically related, so they can enjoy the quiet."
For Bush, knitting means more than a chance for peace and quiet. Knitting links her with people from different cultures, generations and centuries past. "There's a lot of magic in knitting," she says. "I've met with people with whom I could not speak, but we're both knitters and we had (something) that we could share."