Dennis the Pirate socks

For various complicated reasons involving a chip wrapper, a golf umbrella, a bin, a karategi, a bus journey and an action similar to the earlier sock-hoovering incident, I am prevented from spending any money on birthday presents for Firstspawn.

The forthcoming occasion cannot, obviously, go unmarked. So I am currently constructing his worst nightmare, a pair of mother-made socks. They’re being knitted from wool I already had lying about the place thus not incurring any expenditure.

I am, though, making a slight gesture towards his tastes. He likes Dennis the Menace, as exemplified by the character’s red-and-black striped jumper, and he likes skulls and crossbones so I decided to combine the two.

Fine yarn and fine needles mean 60 stitches to cast on for a child’s sock size allowing enough latitude to adapt a free skull chart off the web to repeat perfectly four times around the sock.

Thus it is that I appear to have sort of kind of designed my first knitting pattern. And it would be easily adapted for larger sizes. Perhaps I shall make myself a pair and with luck my appalling tension over the fairisle section will have improved.

I hope he likes them, at least a little bit. But if he doesn’t he knows where the hoover is kept.

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