OK, so me being the Tsarina of Tsocks and all, obviously socks is what makes the business, and I am what makes the socks (with apologies to Ketti Frings et al). And if you’re here for sock talk, well, never fear, there’ll be plenty of sock talk around here soon, believe you me. Nevertheless, all socks and no squid makes Lisa a dull girl, so I hope nobody will blame me today if I brag a little bit on my own special cephalopod, Archie (short, of course, for Architeuthis Dux). He’s on my mind right now because he only recently left the shelter of my roof and my knitting bag, and I’m missing him. Yes, sharp-eyed reader, that was indeed Archie you saw in a proto-post a few days ago (not Matilda, Helen, unless he’s undergone a sex-change without telling me - are you perhaps confusing me with some other squid-knitter?). Here he is again, posed dramatically on the deck of the “Pauline.”

Archie was designed and made as a special gift for a squidophilic friend of mine, and I have to say I got awfully fond of the little fellow toward the end there - he’s about the cuddliest (or rather cuttle-iest) Giant Squid I know - and parting with him at the last was pretty wrenching. It was with a certain bittersweet reluctance that I recently sent Archie to live with… to live with… well, see, it’s like this. Archie’s new home is The Janus Museum, a mysterious locale currently tenanted by: a curator, one Tibor Szegy-Legy; a maintenance man, one Gus; and the possibly late and ectoplasmic Allan Janus, from whom the institution takes its name. The troubling thing is this: though Mr. Szegy-Legy discreetly refers to me as a “Friend of the Museum” and occasionally even as a “Fellow of the Museum,” actually in a complicated sort of way one of these three personages - and I’m not entirely sure which - is my adopted son. I kind of hope it’s Tibor, because he is a son any mother could be proud of: a fine photographer and artist, and the author of both a fascinating book and a valuable museum journal. (On the other hand, Gus has a certain rough-hewn charm, especially when modeling hats and t-shirts and antique weapons. And as for the enigmatic Allan… who can say?) So, anyway, that’s where Archie is now, and I certainly hope he and Tibor and Gus and Allan (and Max and Maxine and Leroy and Natasha and Zoe and Gilmore and all those shadowy Norbecks and Wallingfords) will be very happy together.

Snif.

Archie is made out of two fingering-weight wool yarns from my superannuated stash; beyond their verified feltability I have no idea what they are. (The maroon is single-ply from an umarked cone; the grey is 4-ply and was part of a yard-sale haul several years ago. Scrounge ‘R’ Us.) I pretty much figured him out as I went along, and rather to my surprise he turned into sort of a natural technique sampler. Except for a small stuffing-hatch/beak-base, he’s knitted all in one piece, in the round, on US #2 needles; his stabilizer fin is double-knit; the pointy bit of the mantle over the siphon (hey, how about all this anatomically correct terminology, huh?) is short-rowed; his legs are pseudo-intarsia; his mighty feeder tentacles are i-cord, with double-knit tips; and along the way he required multiple provisional cast-ons and even a piece of medallion knitting. His beak is made of black glove leather, lined with red glove leather. His eyes are black coat buttons backed with commercial white felt. He’s lightly felted, and he’s stuffed with ordinary polyfill, plus a few small trawlers.

He is the Terror of the Deep. Fear him, ye mariners.

(P.S. to Ponto, Steve, Helen, and Empress Knitasha - thank you kindly for your warm welcome. Yes, this blogging business is even more seductive than I feared. Oh, and E.K. - no, Madam, I do not believe we are connected to the Tsainted Tsylvia, she being, to judge from your description, the sort of person we prefer to burn at the tstake.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Archie, Felting. 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.