The Left Sock Workshop

By Flossie Peitsch

I walked along the windy ridge of the Sorrento back beach, early morning, golden sunshine, a new day promising, no regrets of yesterday’s events, except maybe the extra glass of Lyceum Red. Then I saw it. Still bright green, though saturated and sand encased…..the left sock. A mother somewhere is wondering ‘Where is that child’s other sock?” Despite her diligence, this sock will have escaped its owner and its owner’s guardian to take on a new life as a solitary sock on a lone knoll. What was to become of it now? Happily, it came home with me to become my art project.

I see the left sock as a metaphor for the many people and household tasks we see to in a day, or a lifetime. We, mostly women but not all, carefully organize, seeing to tiny details, thoughtfully prepare, gather, drive to completion and clean up for our personal community or ‘families’. Until all that is left as a witness to our tender, careful thought is one worn out, mateless sock. I admit that some might see a single sock as a mark of failure. It should be seen as a victory or this sock, too, would be ‘missing in action’. It represents years of service, attention to detail, investment, work and love to those we live with.

Participants, aged two to eighty-two, from all Australia were invited to embellish a left sock like a treasure. They sewed, machine stitched, embroidered, glued or otherwise decorated a sock with ribbon, buttons, lace, sequins, glitter, edging or other things and posted the socks to me.

I was touched by the many personal notes tucked in the socks explaining the significance of that particular left sock. Here is an excerpt from one such letter:

A Participant's Response

DECORATING A SOCK

by Glad Koch, 2005
Article printed in 'Lutheran Women', 2006

A sock? A left Sock? Decorate it? That’s a new idea! But why the left sock? - something against the right sock? Oh, I see, you mean a sock that’s been left somewhere.

Being a mum & a grandma, I know about socks that have been left or lost. To me they even appear lonely, separated from their partners, at a sports field, school ground, the back lawn, by a roadside, under a bed. Decorate them, sounds like a great idea. They can do with some uplifting being alone without the other.

Flossie Peitsch found a lone lost sock on Sorrento Back Beach south of Melbourne. A moment of two thinking about it and then inspiration struck. Being an artist she said to herself: Let’s decorate this lonely left one. (Remember her article in the last issue of Lutheran Women?) I want to explore this left sock! How did it come to be there? Who lost it and left it lying in the sand, abandoned? Was that person also lost, or feeling all alone, like a refugee or newly arrived immigrant in desperate need of safety, security and care ?

Left socks, left people, there are so many of them, - many millions in fact. Then she remembered that a hundred and fifty years ago Caroline Chisholm’s heart was moved by the thought of desperately lonely people, without adequate food, or shelter, and no one caring for them. Discarded people need to be picked up, given new lives and new dignity. Chisholm put her faith, imagination and energy into action providing “shakedowns” (rough houses/sheds) in which families and individuals could shelter. She provided clothing (even socks) to keep them warm. At that, Flossie thought, “I’m going to arrange an art display of a lots and lots of brightly decorated left socks to remind us of such people whom we are called to treat with dignity. But how can I get a hundred or more of them?”

One Sunday, during morning coffee after worship Flossie asked me to decorate a left sock or two (or four or ….). She challenged my latent artistic inventiveness, and then went on to do the same with other people all over the country. The result? I produced one sock, then another and another, to be joined by others prepared by interested people from almost every State, well over a hundred of them. Decorated and featuring a bright new dignity. It was amazing to see all these left socks from little child’s to large adult’s (now made beautiful) being displayed on a mound of black fabric. Movingly beautiful and evocative of Jesus words: “Whatever you did to the least of these .. you did for me”.