An exception

Stocking progress, a photo by Asplund on Flickr.

Normally, I don't knit socks - for no particular reason, I just don't enjoy it very much. (But I admire hand-knitted socks and the work and skills behind them.)

However, I'm in the middle of an exception after agreeing to knit a pair about a year ago, getting the yarn about half a year ago. What attracted me was knitting something to be part of an 18th-century style costume (they're for a member of the society of Gustafs Skål), trying to create something that could have been worn in the late 1700s.

What didn't attract me is knitting a lot of stocking stitch with hardly any patterns. Fortunately, I thought of a picture in a book I one saw: a pair of knee-length stockings with a stars on the calves, stars that grew smaller to harmonize with the decreases - and perhaps to accentuate and draw attention to a shapely calf? (Or a trompe-l'œil effect to make a less fortunate wearer's calves look shapely?)

However that may be, I tried to do something similar here - to make them less tedious to knit - even though I'm certain those stockings weren't that old, and for all I know stockings may not have been decorated like this in the 1700s.  

I had a lot more fun knitting Marianne Isager's Viften/The Fan for the fourth time, now a red one using Drops Silke-Tweed (discontinued) from my stash. I reused my modifications from last year.