Jennifer’s birthday falls just a few days after mine.

We had this great plan, she and I, wherein she was going to come down here for the weekend of my party and we were going to kill hecatombs of birds with that one stone - catching up on some of our post-Rhinebeck business, dyeing some yarn, organizing the yarn/planning for The Nine Tailors, etc. She was going to make some promised meat deliveries, and most important of all we were going to force her into some badly-needed scheduled R&R.

And because the date of the party fell precisely between my birthday and hers, I had another very cool plan, which was that I was going to surprise her with her present AT the party. With an audience. Because I’m exhibitionistic like that.

And because I had it ready in plenty of time.

So what does she up and do? she up and catches strep throat. And I’m telling you, that girl has been SI-I-I-I-I-ICK.

All my beautiful wickedness, right down the drain. And every time we tried to reschedule, she’d have a relapse, or Nora would have a relapse, or there’d be some crisis on the farm, or… well, the upshot is we still haven’t had our weekend (and I’m way too superstitious to let on anything about how much better she is now or when we’re hoping to try for it again). And of course the Stealth Factor just added insult to injury: all that time I couldn’t blog the FO! So at last, as a sop to the jinx, last week I threw in the towel and put the damn thing in the mail to her.

I have a short-standing tradition of making socks for her. Last year I didn’t even know about her birthday until Rhinebeck, so when I got home I scrambled into the stash and pulled out some DK alpaca and whipped up a quick pair of surprise bedsocks, which went over pretty well. Then again, last year was pretty early days for us. Things are different this year - and one of the differences is that this year I had the luxury of planning ahead. A good thing, too, because if you happen to be me there is a complicated paradoxical factor involved in making socks for Jennifer.

I’m pretty spoiled, you know, as regards sock yarn - picking out some skein off the shelf, even a lovely one, is just not part of my modus operandi. When I want to make a pair of socks as a present for someone… well, you know what I do. I go straight to Jennifer and ask her to Do What I’m Thinking. And she does.

But what if the recipient is Jennifer herself? Making her do half the work on her own present - well, it’d have a humorous element to it, I suppose, but it just doesn’t seem right.

And then, just as I was really starting to puzzle my pea brain over this problem, along came serendipity… in the form of Astrid.

I’d been watching with very great interest as Astrid experimented with her bamboo-blend colorways - the more so as I was deeply familiar with the yarn itself, which is supplied by Jennifer and is in fact the same base Jen uses for her Bamboo Ewe line (as seen in Turandot; also in the Sandstone that’s currently marinating in the stash; also in a number of players to be named later). In Astrid’s hands it’s become Damselfly Leafy Sheep, and the minute she posted about photographing the first skeins for her Etsy shop my attention was drawn to the green on the top of this pile.

From Astrid’s blog…

I wrote with some questions. We discussed. The light-bulb appeared over my head. We worked a deal. And to make a long story only slightly less long, the inaugural skein of Leafy Sheep in the “Bamboo Forest” colorway became mine.

This is one of those unphotographable colors, partly just because it’s green and green and green, partly because it’s a little different in every light, and so every picture you take of it both does and doesn’t capture something of its essence. That said…

I wavered briefly between water themes and jungle themes, but finally the yarn’s name and its fundamental non-blue-ness won out.

I’m calling the sock “You Jane.”

(The Boy^TM advocated calling it “Ewe Jane”… but it seems I have my limits.)

It’s not a particularly complicated design, for once. The stitch pattern is (of course!) Traveling Vine, a fine old standard courtesy of BGW - and what I totally love about it is the way its angles makes the color repeats dance and shoot off in different directions. Kind of like a lacy entrelac effect… only easy and hassle-free.

Pooling? What pooling?

I also love the chameleon-like quality; the fabric has two entirely different personalities

depending on whether or not it’s stretched to its full extent.

(The stitch has still another look entirely if you work it in laceweight… but that’s a story for another time.)

Then came another piece of serendipity: thanks to The Nine Tailors I just happened to have these green beads, see… and damned if they didn’t just happen to match…

… so I had me a little discreet fun with the cuff. Because, really now, jungle or no jungle, a girl likes a little bling now and then.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 12:04 am and is filed under Sock Designs, Bloggerei, You Jane. 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.