Stories in Stitches

To the casual observer, knitting is just knitting. It's a shawl, a scarf, a  pair of socks, whatever. They keep you warm.

To the knitter, there's quite likely a lot of stories embedded in the final product. Maybe in the colour of the yarn, or the choice of the pattern. There are stitch patterns with universal meanings and stitch patterns with personal meanings. Maybe the knitter took the yarn to a festival or a coffee date, and knit those happy memories into the project.

I'd like to tell the story associated with one of my recent project.

It starts with Doctor Who.

But not all of them, just one.

Isn't he delicious? But not him.

More delicious! But not him, either. We're talking season six mythology.

Specifically, the mythology of Melody Pond.

Whose name was embroidered onto a prayer leaf for Amy Pond.

And the inspiration for a gorgeous skein of yarn.

And there's the mysterious phrase, "The only water in the forest is the river."



I decided to bring them together in a pair of socks.

It took a lot of paging through stitch dictionaries, and several attempts to get it right. The above picture shows one iteration, with leaves on the left, separated from the pine trees on the right by the river in between.

And here are the results. Socks that are supposed to say "The only water in the forest is the river."

I wanted to enter them into the State Fair, but I was concerned they wouldn't display well.

Confession: I haven't worn them at all, except to take pictures. I love them so much, I can't bear to have them eventually wear holes.

Maybe I should have chosen a different medium than socks to tell the story.

Disclaimer: all Doctor Who images are property of the BBC. They own Doctor Who. The rest of us just admire it.