fo: toe-up socks (vintage unknown)

the world premiere! Mason/Dixon socks.

That invisible line has been crossed. I can now begin a new pattern and “knit on with confidence”*, serene and certain in my ability to cross barriers with – if not ease and grace – at least a bumbling sort of constancy.I digress. These socks were knitted toe-up (a first!), with lovely calf increases ‘unvented’ by myself, using all but a yard (or so) of vintage Red Heart yarn – a gift from Cullen’s grandmother. (God only knows how old the yarn is. When did 250 yards cost 49c at Woolworth’s? for that matter, when did Woolworth’s go out of business?).

Size 0 circular needle, 16 stitch figure-8 cast-on, 68 stitch total width, a garter stitch row to mark beginning of heel, et cetera. Raveled as Mason/Dixon socks, which Pynchon book I was (re)reading as I knit – sometimes simultaneously. I can imagine Dixon wearing them, scratching his ankle during  Meeting – or are they more Mason? more like his drab colors, hidden from sight in his boots, as he watches another hanging in the rain … or runs from a rampaging wheel of cheese.

The color is “natural”, which could mean anything at all, or nothing. It looks like a light purple, a lilac-y purple, to me, but Cullen swears it is tan (and then goes off on a rant about how I can’t see color accurately, I should go to the ophthalmologist, blah blah blah) …

I really cannot say how much I love them. The fit is perfect – the stitches follow the curves of the foot – the decreases are beautiful – the increases look like a fern or a feather on my calf – the styling is so …  old-fashioned! so … so perfect.

*thank you, Elizabeth Zimmerman.

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