So, like I already said over on the club KAL… Summer is icumen in, lhud sing cuckoo.

Solstice schmolstice. I don’t care what the calendar says. Far as I’m concerned, when I start hearing the ice cream truck in the street… can summer be far behind? Nope. School’s gonna be out any second. Summer is here NOW.

There’s a little piece of me that will always be a New York City kid. Oh, your Good Humor truck and your Mister Softee are all very well (even the weird little truck in my neighborhood that plays “Turkey in the Straw” instead of the Mister Softee song has its place, I guess) - but when I think summer treats the first thing that comes to mind is Italian ices, with their bright colors and their intense flavors and their sticky staining juice melting down your chin.

That’s why our club sock for June is “The Iceman Cometh.”

Three scoops on a waffle cone (yeah, the little paper cup would be more authentic, but I draw the line at making the foot of a sock in white… and besides, I like waffle cones), with a choice of flavors.

Clockwise from bottom: Black Cherry, Blue Raspberry, Strawberry, Lime, and Pina Colada.

(Nope, no lemon. I know, I know… but lemon ice is white. See above re white.)

The prototype, as in the sketch, stacks up like this:

BTW, this was not the sock we originally planned for June. You may recall some talk of bamboo blends and a bamboo theme, a while back - I’ve been wanting to do a “Turandot” sock for many months now, and it seemed just the thing for summer knitting. Well, there was a teeny misunderstanding with the mill about availability and timing on the bamboo, so “Turandot” will still be just the thing for summer knitting - but in August. Meanwhile, the Iceman is plenty summery; even though it’s being made in our usual wool blend it is VERY thoroughly air-conditioned.

It has tiny eyelet ice cream cones on the toe

and on the heel.

There are eyelets in the waffle cone

and in the ribbing at the top of the cone.

And each scoop features more eyeletty ice cream cones:

The fit is relaxed, almost slouchy - like melting ice, don’t you know. (It’s a bit of a departure for me - no ribbing at all, not even hidden. The sock does stay up just fine, but it doesn’t even think about binding. Doesn’t so much hug the ankle as lightly kiss it.)

In real life my favorite ice is probably lemon, but it is hard for me to convey how passionately I love the strawberry in this bunch of colors (almost as hard as it is to convey the color itself accurately). If I didn’t have an obligation to demonstrate the overall concept here, I’d seriously consider using it for all three scoops. Then again, I love them all - in fact, I’ve cast on Sock #2 starting with Black Cherry.

(Yes, it’s top-down. Don’t ask me about the heel yet, OK? I’ve just invented it, and I want to rework it one more time before I write it up.)

Blob Status Report

• Red: unchanged.
• Green: shot; shipped.
• Beige: finished.

 
Tomorrow: back to work on Swan Lake II.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 11:13 pm and is filed under Sock Designs, TsockFlock Club, Iceman Cometh, Laceball Cap. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.