Hello, I hope you’ve had a good week so far. I’ve been busy as a bee this week, and have finished another pair of socks from the wonderful 52 Weeks of Socks book – the Imker socks. As you can see, they are slightly too long for me, but they are for someone with feet two shoe sizes up so that’s fine.
Imker is the Dutch word for beekeeper and I think the design idea is brilliant, with honeycomb cables on feet and legs…
…and even a kind of tiny honeycomb stitch on the heel flaps.
I knit the backs of the legs in plain stocking stitch, because I’d read in other people’s Ravelry notes that with cables all round, the legs get too narrow to get your feet into the socks. The other modification I’ve made is using German short rows on the heels instead of the Wrap-&-Turn method (a great post about the how and why of that can be found here.)
The only thing I’m not very enthusiastic about is the very short heel flap. Having said that, the socks do fit very well around the heel and foot.
The yarn I used is Onion Nettle Sock, a blend of 70% wool and 30% nettle fibres, in shade 1032, a warm honey brown.
The stinging nettle fibre is added for durability as a sustainable alternative to nylon. The wool-and-nettle blend looks and feels like wool blends with other plant fibres in them, like cotton or linen. The nettle fibre takes the dye differently than the wool, which gives an ever so slightly marled effect.
While I was knitting these socks, I was thinking about bees and remembered a book I’ve loved reading – Linnets and Valerians by Elizabeth Goudge.
It’s a children’s classic from 1964, about Nan, Robert, Timothy and Betsy, who come to live with their eccentric uncle somewhere in the English countryside. Uncle’s cook/housekeeper/gardener Ezra is also an imker, and bees play an important role in the story.
Ezra teaches the children “Bees understand every word you say. They be the most wonderful creatures God ever made. If men were to ‘ave one-quarter o’ the wisdom o’ the bees this wicked world would be a better place…”
Ezra’s philosophy is, “If you’re good to the bees the bees they’ll be good to you.” He also warns the children, “you must mind your manners with ‘em. They like a bit o’ courtesy.”
Heeding Ezra’s warning, I asked some of the bees in our garden very politely if they’d please sit still for a moment, so that I could take a picture of them. But either they speak a different language here or they just weren’t listening, because I haven’t been able to capture them. My husband was more succesful as a honey bee whisperer and took this photo:
Isn’t it gorgeous? The orange clumps on the bee’s legs are pollen. To be honest, I had to look that up and found out that some species of bees actually have baskets on their legs for collecting pollen. Amazing! There is so much about bees that I don’t know yet. What I do know is that I love some of their honey in my ginger-and-lemon tea.
I don’t know exactly how consuming honey relates to Ezra’s philosophy about being good to the bees, though. Sigh, life can get very complicated once you start thinking about things. Wishing you a great weekend, with hopefully time to enjoy some knitting and a nice cup of tea (with or without honey).
Great photos and thanks for sharing all of this! Nice job on socks and changes. I may have to get out this book and have a go.
I’ve really enjoyed knitting these – highly recommended! It’s great book and I hope to knit more socks from it.