Striped Socks and Vera Stanhope

The knitting: Socks

The novel: The Crow Trap, by Ann Cleeves

I had never read a Vera Stanhope novel, but I had seen 3 or 4 seasons of the BBC series.  I loved it, but was a little surprised at how long I read before really getting to read about, you know, Vera.  Truly, I read nearly 200 pages about other characters and their backstories before the inspector had any dialogue.

The Crow Trap is 535 pages and fits in a lot: the painstaking description of how to survey land to record plants and wildlife, Vera's sad recollections of how our interests can become our idols, red herrings, damning descriptions of rich people, rich descriptions of nearly every character so that they're distinct and interesting, and a landscape full of mist and murder.  And regret.  Everyone is full of regret and secrets and the only people without both are idiots we're encouraged to view with contempt.  I love it.

I really enjoyed all the little details about people's mannerisms, their clothes, and especially their homes and gardens.

I'm pairing the socks with the book because the colors go so well together.  The cover reminded me of the yarn--I bought a few skeins at Tuesday Morning last year for about $7 a skein.  It's Wisdom Yarns (part of Universal Yarns) Stanza line, which is already discontinued.  It's some nice self-striping sock yarn with colorways named after writers.  This is the Blake colorway.  I haven't completed a pair of socks in a really long time, but I'm more than halfway through the second leg.  I've been worried about my gauge lately, and so I try to knit socks like their impenetrable.  Then I get sore joints and have a hard time returning to the knitting project.  I have several (maybe 5?) projects like this where I probably need to unravel the whole thing and start over with a more relaxed tension.

This pair is probably for me.  Once they're finished, I'll give them a little soak and see how they hold together.  The pattern is the same one I always use--Basic Sock Recipe by the Stephanie Pearl-McPhee.  Sometimes I work a bit of rib pattern on there, and sometimes I think I'll do something different with the heel flap, but that didn't feel right here.  I actually ripped back some work on the heel flap rather than push through, and now I'm much happier with it.