Got Stripes?

The stripes are just bustin' out all over on this blog and in my knitting basket where the man of the house is concerned. Not only did he select stripey (non-grey) yarn for a sweater, he made a pretty radical selection for his next pair of socks.

Trekking XXL (Color 90) Sock Toe

Many of you may know that I hunt far and wide to find John the widest selection of grey and black sock yarn anywhere on the planet to select from. Since socks are the one knitted item that I am almost guaranteed to get appreciation for, I want to make sure that he never lacks for good choices in his favorite colorways. On my last trip to ThreadBear Fiber Arts I got a little wild and crazy and picked out the yarn you see in the picture above. Brown, orange and green stripes. But I figured if he didn't like it, I liked the stuff and it wouldn't go to waste.

So after I finished John's last pair of socks, I got all the manly sock yarn out of my stash and laid it out in front of him. And out of that pile of grey and black John selected the one skein that I thought he would be the most skeptical of: the Trekking with the brown orange and green stripes.

Since I enjoyed knitting Mariko's sock swap socks in Lucy Neatby's Bosnian toe-up sock pattern so much, I decided that I would use the same pattern for John's next pair of socks, minus the crenelated edges (something tells me that they wouldn't go over well on a manly sock). I haven't gotten as far as I would have liked on them (I have just finished the increase that gets me to 72 stitches around -- they're on size 0's and I'm getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 9 stitches/inch), I do like the striping pattern that I am seeing. I've asked John about forty-two times whether or not he will actually wear the stripes, and not only does he put up with my over-concern, he actually maintains that he likes the stripes and will definitely wear the socks.

I now have this secret hope that he might actually consider wearing them at the same time as he is wearing Fitzgerald.

I know, I know -- that's probably way too much to ask. And there is no doubt that such an event would likely cause the earth to start spinning in the opposite direction on it's axis. But a girl's gotta have dreams!