Uzumlu is a small, remote village tucked between rolling hills and sprawling farmlands. The winter air has an icy bite to it, but the grass remains a green oasis for the shepherds and their flocks. The village was once a winter grazing ground for a semi-nomadic people who moved from the high Caucasus mountains in the summer to these lowlands in the winter. During the Soviet times, the government settled the people here, building permanent houses and establishing the large farms that surround them. The nomadic lifestyle of the people became stagnant. Their village became an isolated pocket of language and culture, cut off from the rest of their people who lived in the mountains.
One of the women who live in this village is named Saliya. Saliya remembers the mountains of her childhood. She also remembers how her mother would knit socks for her when she was a little girl. Her mother taught her many handcrafts, including knitting, carpet weaving and sewing. She knit socks for her own dowry and for the dowries of her daughters.
Now, at the age of sixty-eight, Saliya knits to remember the good days, and to help the lonely days pass by. At one point, her life was filled with a busy family, she had six daughters and one son. Sadly, her son passed away when he was still young, and then her husband died a few years ago. All of her daughters have married, and moved to the lands of their husbands. Some of those daughters have gone back to the mountain places. Though life is lonely for Saliya, she is not a quiet person. She is expressive and loud in her speech, sharing her ideas with humor and passion. We conduct our sock business on the bench in front of her house, a bench that is well worn as she participates in village life, greeting her neighbors as they pass by (and keeping tabs on all of the latest gossip). Our visits are filled with much laughter as she chides us for our color choices- preferring sparkling pink and red over our calmer choices of teal or green. She reminds us that if the yarn is beautiful, then the socks are beautiful. She is happy to have her hands busy with the work of knitting.
