Happy V Day

Personally, my favorite holiday this month is Groundhog's Day, but for those of you more attuned to Hallmark moments than wildlife ones (although Punxsutawney Phil lives in a library every other day of the year), I thought I would share a sweet story that also, coincidentally I swear, gives me the chance to show a recently finished piece of knitting. Since Valentine's Day is fast approaching, I give you mystery, romance, knitting and wedding proposals. What more could you ask?

Back in November, my former professor Cindy asked for my help in locating a missing stocking pattern. Not just any stocking pattern, but the one she knit twice 23 years ago for her tiny new twin sons. You gotta admire a woman who, with two boisterous school age boys and a pair of infants, still manages to knit 2 stockings between giving birth in September and the twins' first Christmas. (She's amazing in other ways too, but I found this especially impressive.) Now that the twins are all grown up and one recently became engaged, he asked his Mom to knit a matching stocking for his lovely fiancé. (That's the romantic part. Isn't that sweet?) After a housewide search that would make any CSI proud, she found the pattern she knit for her two older sons. She found the pattern her own mother knit for HER many more than 23 years ago. But the instructions for Michael's:

Gone, gone, gone. Enter Gail and her penchant for knitting mysteries. Since plastering the neighborhood with flyers probably would not have helped, I flashed the photo around to my guild buddies. They all agreed it was a charming stocking.

And they had never seen it before in their life.

I set about reverse engineering the pattern. Seeing as the original is a genuine Family Treasure, having been lovingly hung every year, I could not throw it in my trunk and work on it at my leisure. I needed a plan. Several visits to the stocking and hours later, this is some of what I came up with:

After all that, I wanted to make sure it would work. Besides, I felt a certain sense of investment. This is my version:

Okay, so I finished in February and have a little trouble following directions when it comes to color ...

Epilogue:

Even though today's yarns and the pattern are not a perfect match, Michael and, more importantly, his fiance were charmed by her stocking.

While in the stocking business, Cindy decided her older son's girlfriend of several years had earned a stocking as well. So click, click, click and 2 stockings drop from Cindy's needles in less than a month. Seeing his girlfriend's stocking hanging over the fireplace, her older son realized his honey was a reallio trulio member of the family: a keeper. He proposed. Two stockings. Two future weddings. Just another example of the power of knitting.