Whiskers and Pawprint Socks: October 2006 Archives
Sometimes it just takes me a little while to get things finished. I've been working on a new sock design. It's a sock design meant to honor my aunt, who has spent an awful lot of time loving cats and involved in rescue projects and working to help whatever Humane Society she is living near. She's also the person who helped make sure that my Beezle found his forever home with us (my brother and his wife have a brother and sister to the Beeze). We were skeptical at first, but he worked perfectly and doesn't have too many bad habits.
I spent some time looking through my books for feline themed stitch patterns. I wanted to create a sock that was evocative of cats without being too over the top. I love our fur people, but it's easy to go over the top into crazy cat lady with cat themed clothing, and I didn't want to do that. When I first posted about this pattern, I was pleased that a number of people saw butterflies. While the main working title for these socks is "Whiskers and Pawprints", I subtitled them "Butterflies and Flowers" since I think the patterning can make you think of either, depending on the yarn you choose.
In this case, the yarn is medium weight Socks That Rock in the colorway "Amber". I picked it because it made me think of big orange tabby cats and it was very close to a semi-solid. I wanted a semi-solid, because I figured it would be easy for both the textured stitch and the lace element to get lost in the color. As it turns out, it's also a very appropriate color for Halloween, I think. So today I present an amber-colored gallery of sock images.
This is one of those socks that looks like it takes more time to knit than it really does. It has a perky little picot edging (it made me think of pointy cat ears) the leg of the sock carries the main design down to a shortrow heel (with a little decoration because my aunt likes a sock she can wear with Birkenstock type shoes) and then carries on down the top of the instep (the bottom is straight stockinette). The toe design is my attempt to create the suggestion of a cat paw.
I'm going to cast on for the second sock soon, and start working on writing up the pattern. As always with these sorts of posts, I'm open to hearing any opinions and suggestions that you might be willing to share.
