River City Yarns is a lovely store and through the years, the ladies there have been very good to me, first as a new place to buy yarn close to my job, then as employers and finally as friends whom I occasionally buy yarn from. My favourite yarns may have diverged from much of what they stock, but they are still my favourite LYS. One of the things they wanted to do in their business was to have their own unique store line of yarn and patterns to support it. They did that in a small way for a while with a hand dyed line of yarn but in the last few years, they have expanded to several luxury lines of yarns as well as a good basic yarn and some very interesting hand dyed sock yarns in the colours of hockey teams and more recently football teams.
I have always supported the luxury lines, Eden and Adam and Eve because well, luxury, but Hat Trick, the hockey sock line never quite caught my imagination. I am just not into hockey and without Brian, had no reason to knit hockey socks. That changed a couple years ago when they launched their Hot Shawl pattern designed for them by Holly Yeoh. That pattern is striking, my favourite colours and the strong contrast that catches my imagination every time. Since that pattern, I watch all their designs and yarns carefully.
When Touchdown yarns came out, I had to get the Saskatchewan colourway. Football, specifically being a Rider fan, is just part of being from Saskatchewan, even when you don't love football all that much. I had to have it. I was pretty sure who the yarn would be for too. My mom. In recent years, my mom has become a huge football fan. She always enjoyed it but until she wa a senior she didn't become quite so rabid a fan. All her grandsons tease her that she is who they go to when they have to know some arcane detail about teams and who played where and when and who did what to whom and so on. Grandma knows her CFL. I was less sure what I was going to make for her. The original plan was for a shawl and she still might get the shawl too.
Doesn't really explain why I am using Saskatchewan for socks though does it? You know how sometimes you just have to knit a thing? Right now? How it doesn't leave your head till you knit it and get it out of your system?
Well, when I saw the Gridiron sock pattern on one of my forays to RCY, it had to be mine. On the pattern photo, this variegated 3 colour yarn magically produced stripes of solid red from the Calgary colourway. Obviously it was a slip stitch pattern but something else really interesting had to be going on, to make that happen. Besides, Kate Atherley knit it, and she wrote the book on fitting socks. It was bound to be interesting.
I set my mind to knit the sock for my mom as a silly Christmas gift (she isn't a wool person) and then things happened, and I did not even get it started. So now after Christmas and before next football season, she will have them.
When I started the the other night, I really did intend to simply knit the toe. When I did not stop, I wasn't worried. I had read the pattern though and proceeded, only my sock did not look like the pattern looked. See the white in the grid lines?
I was kind of disgusted with myself. I know that wise knitters do not start something new when they are tired. I know my own personal issue of reading patterns. I know the dangers of starting a new project when all I really needed was something to knit on. I have the WIPs to prove it!
Looking like the pattern with strong green lines running upwards was the whole point of this sock so this morning, I sat down and read the pattern. Several times. And started again, and voila!
I don't think I misread the pattern so much as that I did not let go of an expectation and a supposition of what I was supposed to do. It's a little like turning a sock heel the first time, you have to let go of the idea that you have to knit all the stitches, every round. That led to a huge aha moment and so did this, in its own little way. You have to let your expectation go of what you think you have to do and just do exactly what it says.
I want to say a word too about the yarn. It's yummy. Very yummy. It is a wool and nylon blend so I have no doubt it will be good and sturdy. The RCY people demand that from a sock yarn but it is quite strikingly, yummy. You are very aware that this is not just an ordinary sock yarn. This yarn is sock luxury, pure luxury for feet and beyond. It is time I learned to let go my expectation of what a yarn is until I work with it.
I expected sock yarn. I found a little bit of unexpected luxury. Banner headline for a good day.
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