The Other Part of Prodigal

If you look up the word prodigal in the dictionary, you get words like spend-thrift, profligate, and wastrel. These are all good definitions of how one goes about becoming prodigal, but not how one goes about being prodigal. While becoming prodigal involves a great deal of action, primarily ill-advised action, being prodigal involves such complete inaction as to render oneself invisible. Being prodigal involves being lost. Being prodigal is the absence that is only seen when a single member of a pair is visible.

So how does prodigal have anything to do with socks. It has to do with creating only ONE sock. It has to do with challenging the idea that socks only come in pairs. It has to do with creating a lot of individual socks that are sometimes deceptively similar in size and shape, but otherwise completely unique.

What does Prodigal have to do with wearing socks? It has to do with wearing socks that might be made from the same skein of yarn, and might not. It has to do with wearing socks that have absolutely nothing to do with each other aesthetically. We're not talking one brown sock and one navy blue, here.

What does it mean when you wear socks that cannot be blamed on a dark morning or a inattention to detail, socks that are so radically different from each other that even color-blindness cannot be plead? It means that above the hem you conform and below it you retain your rights.

It means a political statement. It means that one has chosen NOT to part one's hair. It means choosing NOT to wear casual togs (that actually cost more than formal business attire) on "Casual Friday." It means choosing NOT to wear "business casual" when one is doing business. It means choosing to say, publically, that the Kafeteria Kulture is dead and Less is NOT More. Less is Less.

I want Less Monotonous Manufactured Crap. I want luxury and diversity.

That means consistently wearing business clothes to work along with socks that appear to be, but are not mismatched. They cannot be mismatched because they are matchlessly and luxuriously beautiful.

Missy's Loop Hole

The most gratifying thing about teaching someone how to do something is the amount you learn yourself. And not just old techniques that have been revamped by new designers and given a new flash name by them, but new ways of seeing.

Specifically, multimedia in fiber art, is something that wilted in the neglected back corner of the art department when I was a child and is now something that is so hot it's very nearly passe already.

But before multi-media is discarded as a way to work in fiber, several other dyed in the wool concepts need to be jetisoned. Correct lengths for scarves ... out the window. Correct size and shape for hats ... down the toilet. Correct types of yarns, buttons and button holes for handmade clothing ... in the garbage.

A student came up with a few images of scarves she'd be interested in making and two of the three incorporated over sized buttons. The technique the student thought they needed to learn was making button-holes. The technique they actually needed to learn was misdirection of the eye.

The primary scarf pattern pictured here, Missy's Loop Hole, is very, very simple and employs one type of button hole technique, though it's not used for buttons. The other three scarves will employ the misdirection of the eye. Though I'm calling them scarves, these patterns could just as easily be called neck cuffs or dickeys.

This simple cabled neck cuff, though takes on a slightly different look depending on whether it's executed in Red Heart Grande Craft Yarn (like the one at the top of this posting) or in handspun wool dyed "Sky Blue." In both cases, bright yellow asterisk buttons are used deceptively. In both cases, too much fun. In both cases, less than 100 yards of yarn and less than 8 hours spent completing this necessary accessory.