Gingerbread House Knee Socks

For my 2nd pair of post-tenure socks (begun in mid-March), I turned to KnitPicks Imagination, a cushy blend of 50% Merino Wool / 25% Superfine Alpaca / 25% Nylon, in the colorway called "Gingerbread House," which setssix different cheerful "gumdrop" colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple) against a background of warm ginger-brown. I really love this yarn for socks!! Which is good, because I have several more colors stashed away... It knits up into a wonderful fabric, soft and warm and snuggly against the skin. I wanted to see how far I could go on two skeins (= 438 yards) to fit my smallish (US size 61/2, European size 37) feet. So I used the Lace and Cable pattern from Wendy Johnson's Socks from the Toe Up, with one skein for each sock, and basically kept knitting until I ran out of yarn.

What I got, to my amazement and delight, was a splendid pair of honest-to-goodness KNEESOCKS. Once againI worked the two socks in tandem by switching off between two sets of dpn's: first both toes, then feet, then heels, then legs, then cuffs. To shape the calves, I measured the circumference of my lower leg at 2" intervals and calculated first increases and then decreases based on my gauge. And to help the socks stay up, I switched to smaller needles for 1" of ribbing at the top, and finished off with Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off (JSSBO). They fit me perfectly and don't fall down with general use, although a brisk walk can cause them to sag a bit, but that happens with commercial wool knee socks too. I had less than a foot of yarn left over on either side. The colors pooled a bit here and there, but I don't mind the effect. In fact, I rather like it. As always, click on any one of these photos to view an enlargement.

Oh my, but to my mind these are genuinely *happy* socks, so bright and colorful and toasty warm, and they go beautifully with the tawny brown leather clogs that I wear pretty much constantly through 3 seasons of the year, in all but the most inclement weather.

Oak Grove mitts

I grew up in a house surrounded by woods and adjacent to this CT state park. Many of the biggest trees there are mighty oaks, and so I have developed a fondness for oak leaves and acorns as decorative motifs, because they remind me of home.

That's what attracted me to Anna Dalvi's Oak Grove Mitts pattern, which features a beautifully embossed oak leaf, framed by a pointed arch, on the back of each hand. For this special project I treated myself to a single skein of Sanguine Gryphon Bugga! (70% superwash merino / 20% cashmere / 10% nylon) in a colorway called Arachne, which is basically an autumnal mix of deep red, russet, and brown. It was a quick knit on 2.5 mm (US size 1+) dpn's. At the tight gauge, and for my little hands, I used up only ~125 yards. These mitts fit snugly at the wrists, without impeding the movement of my fingers, which makes them ideally suited for riding in the car or sitting in a chilly house and knitting, reading, typing at the computer, or whatever. And the best part is that I still have enough Bugga! left over for a pair of socks. :-)

"You're not seriously going to wear that in public, are you?!"

Some needlework projects are never-ending, not through any fault of their own, but due mostly to what Gilbert Murray famously called"the failure of nerve" (Five Stages of Greek Religion, c. 1925). I have repeatedly categorized my loving homage to Frejya, our female Maine Coon (a.k.a Big Orange Fluffy Thing or B.O.F.T., see left) as one such. The whole thing took four long years from start to finish. But during that interval I spent most of my time ostentatiously (though guiltily) NOT working on it. Progress came, when it did, in fits & starts, with long empty gaps in between, while I agonized over what to do next. All the actual knitting on this sweater went extremely fast. What worried me was the embroidery, having never attempted to embellish my knitting with decorative stitching before.

Since the pattern did not call for embroidery beyond some simple lines for whiskers and toes, by far the hardest part was figuring out how much, or indeed how little, I should add to the intarsia, which already incorporated texture as well as color, by contrast with the coal black Peruvian highlands wool used in the body of the sweater: brushed Suri alpaca (akin to mohair) in orange, brown, and ivory for the cat, cushy cotton chenille in turquoise for the blanket (or pillow?) that she is curled up on, and on the back ribbon yarn in bright orange for the goldfish scales, and a nubbly chunky wool in dark green for the aquatic plant.

My initial concepts for embellishing the sweater were full of creative inspiration but proved too grandiose, not to say fiddly, and in the end I scaled back quite a bit on the eyelash yarn simulating Frejya's long hair, gave only the barest of outlines to eyes, face, paws, and (on the back) goldfish, and did not attempt to apply whiskers, or (for that matter) fins. I decided to let the cat's whimsical features show through as much as possible. After much deliberation, I chose to omit the dangling tail as well, despite having knitted the intarsia base for it, on the grounds that (a) I could not easily weave in enough eyelash yarn to represent the magnificent plume of a Maine Coon adequately (the breed is described as "the tail with a cat on the end," after all, and see above left), and (b) a tapered appendage hanging down from the side-seam of a garment would present far too great a temptation to our real-life feisty felines, who might attack without warning and damage the sweater (to say nothing of injury to the hapless wearer!!). So my woolen Frejya remains tailless, and contentedly so, at least for now. I reserve the right to change my mind at some point in the future. But in the interest of verisimilitude I should point out that the real Frejya does like to curl up with her tail hidden away underneath her (see above right).

In terms of the actual sweater construction, I kept the turtleneck from the original pattern but converted the raglan sleeves to a set-in style, with straight armholes and a gentle short-row shoulder cap. With its generous outlines and soft fabric, it hangs on me more like a drop-shoulder sweater than anything terribly close-fitted, but the shaping works, and I am delighted with how the garment looks and feels. For all its personality and pizzazz — and yes, that's how I happen to view it, although one friend really did blurt out the question that appears in the heading to this blog post, which simply made me laugh in response — this is also a WARM winter woolly that will serve me well when thermostats are kept low to conserve fuel.

Eventually I will probably sew in a polyester lining, so as to protect the back of the intarsia from abrasion and my dark cotton turtlenecks from stray multi-colored fibers. I have even purchased the black fabric for this, but I have not gotten around to actually doing it yet, in part because I think I want to wear the sweater once or twice as is, before doing anything else to it. Totally typical, hein? Nonetheless, I have been calling this a finished object on Ravelry since March 6th, when I laid down my embroidery scissors and weaved in the last few loose ends, and so I present this photo gallery to mark its completion.

What you see here are wide views of the front and back, followed by close-ups of the neckline, the sleeve shaping, the cat, and the fishbowl. As always, click on any one of these images to view an enlargement.
I just love the goldfish with their *googly* eyes, which I acquired courtesy of the ever-thoughtful Anita, who has a great big bag of them on hand because she often knits sweaters for her grandchildren. :-)