Sapo the sock frog

On our brief Easter weekend trip to Munich, the hubster and I visited a really fun little coffe shop called Café Marais to get our traditional cup of hot chocolate (we try to get some somewhere special everywhere we go). Anyhew, it’s a great little store that’s kind of like an antique shop that you can eat in, and they have lots of awesome things. Of course, what caught my eye was the 1 Euro basket, where I found these amazing knitted wool socks from the 70’s: 😀

I totally fell in love with these. They look like kid’s knee-high socks to me, but that could also be that they are kind of small and I have large-ish feet, the sizing on the tags say 7. Anyhew, they are just beautiful, and I couldn’t wait to make them into a creature of some sort. I picked the pair second from the right to start with, and I thought it would make an awesome frog. The socks are made from Australasian wool, apparently that’s the whole region around Australia and New Zealand and whatnot, crazy, eh? (this stamp is from the sock I didn’t use, but I think it rubs/washes right off for the next time around)

I only wanted to use one sock per creature if possible, as they are too beautiful to waste any, so that’s why his arms aren’t the same pattern as they come from the cuff of the sock. I measured how long I wanted the legs and made them more narrow than I have for other monsters, as frogs have long, skinny legs. When sewing, instead of a running stitch I switched to backstitch, as it is supposed to be stronger and I wanted to be sure to catch all those little knitted threads. I did have some troubles on the tummy area though, as you usually just sew the legs and leave a gap to turn and stuff through, and without any sewing to anchor the knitting started dropping all over the place. Luckily I have an itsy bitsy crochet hook so I was able to finagle some stitches so there wasn’t a hole, but I think next time I might sew over that area before I cut it. I thought the seam near the toes made a fine mouth, but to emphasize it more I puckered it a bit and stitched it into place, and then I also did a line of backstitches just to make his lips look better. I’m not sure I’ll do it that way again, it certainly doesn’t photograph well…

As for the other socks, I may try turning one into a sock rabbit, or maybe a monster, do you have any ideas?

There is time to think of something really cool to do with these socks, as I need to wait until my craft budget renews to get more stuffing… I might have had too much fun this month. Luckily, my mother in law sent me a care package full of things to craft with, so hopefully my polyfill withdrawals won’t be so bad 😉

Time: About 10800 seconds, a nice little afternoon project for the weekend.