Mary Delany is an artist whose work I had heard of before the Bluestocking club. She is known for the accurate and stunning botanical art she made using cut paper. If you’d like to have your mind blown, you can read about her and see some of her works here at the British Museum’s website.
The Mary Delany Bluestocking pattern is a tribute to her floral mosaics, but I did switch things up a bit. The pattern was red flowers on a white ground, but I did white flowers on a red ground for the practical reason that I had more red. Working a fair isle pattern in colors opposite to the chart is a little brain-twisting! Thankfully the pattern was easy to memorize. I only had a little bit of the black, so I eked out every last row I could of the ribbing, then bound off in a contrasting white.
I have little use for ankle socks, and picot edgings are not to my taste, so I made these a standard short-to-mid-calf size. I knit them very quickly, finishing them during our getaway to the mountains of West Virginia, among many beautiful wildflowers of a different biome. The fair isle pattern is a very clever one with no long floats at all. They were meant to be for my cousin, but when I put them on they fit so well….
Still so behind on blogging! We’re settling into a new routine with school and other things, and I haven’t fit blogging into my workflow. But as Elizabeth Zimmermann once said of this stage of life, “Isn’t it wonderful to be necessary?”
Osborn Fiber Studio 