FO – Vinranka

Vinranka, Swedish, (grape)vine, tendril of a vine

Pattern: Vinnland by Becca Compton, the Anit-Craft (#7, 2007).
Needles: US 0, 2.00mm.
Yarn: Hello Yarn Blue Faced Leicester Sock (Cilantro).

Yet another for Project Spectrum (”Earth”).

Do you ever have a yarn that knows exactly what it wants to be? The pattern is completely clear in your mind, even if you haven’t found or written it yet. The fiber may languish in your stash for months, but its true purpose never fades. It waits patiently for a time when you are ready for it. When I scooped up this electric blue faced leicester from Hello Yarn last spring, I knew immediately what it wanted to be. The socks had to be a leafy creeper of a pattern, like early-spring growth (May does, in fact, qualify as “early spring” in the Upper Midwest). And so I waited, keeping my eyes open for just that pattern.

Becca Compton’s Vinnland was published a couple of months later and when I saw it I felt as though she had written the pattern just for me and my Hello Yarn. It was exactly what I had imagined: a leafy pattern climbing up the top of my foot, the way a vine might shoot right up a wall or the trunk of a tree. The match was made, yes, but the socks weren’t ready to be knit as yet. Summer turned to Autumn then to Winter, and the timing still wasn’t right. The world wasn’t ready for these acid vines yet.

I aired the stash in January and gathered up fiber to join me on my journey to Scandinavia. I spotted the Cilantro and recalled the perfect yarn-to-pattern match of 7 months earlier. Socks and those projects with online instructions were both high on the list for travel knitting, so the pattern was bookmarked and the yarn was wound and tucked away into the suitcase.

January turned to February and March and Project Spectrum was underway with Firey oranges, reds and pinks. The Cilantro Vinnlands waited. With April came Earth, still cold and grey, with the occasional snow flurry. But by the middle of the month, there was a change, seemingly overnight. I noticed the early morning and late evening sun. The grass brightened up, no longer muted. The trees were still bare, but Easter lillies and crocus popped up and bushes began to bud, electric green, like the BFL. And suddenly I knew it was time to knit…

I finished these a little bit too late to photograph with those inspiring spring greens, so bright they hurt your eyes. But the socks still seem to blend in with their surroundings. Indeed, spring has arrived and settled in here in Sweden. All that’s left for me is to sit back and enjoy it. Fortunatly, it’s still just chilly enough for the Vinrankas.