I cast on my Pride Sock KAL socks Tuesday (and then ripped them out and cast them on again last night) and I was thinking about Pride right now. As you probably know, June is Pride month here in the US. I’ve seen some people/outlets calling for cancelling or subduing Pride right now because the Black Lives Matter movement should be our focus. In this vein, the quiet queer craft along has been postponed. To some extent I agree. We shouldn’t be blindly posting about pride and ignoring the other issues going on in our society. Big, lavish statements of like YAY PRIDE from corporations who can ignore other issues are not great either. However, I think it’s also important to note a few things. First, the reason we celebrate pride in June is because of the Stonewall Riots, which were protests and riots lead largely by trans Black and other women of color. Secondly, Black members of the LGBTQ+ community are often targeted by people and police and have some of the highest rates of violence against them, especially trans women. Part of Pride is speaking about the good and the bad, and so I think that is important too.
All that said, I feel I can personally celebrate Pride this month and also continue to work on eliminating racism. In that vein, I am planning to donate 5$ for each pair of Rainbow KAL sock completed to SOLUTIONS NOT PUNISHMENT COLLABORATIVE. If you’d like to join me, please see here for a list of Black-Lead LGBTQ+ organizations. Thanks Sarah for this idea and for creating this Knit Along!
So, the socks themselves. I bought yarn from Fully Spun Yarn, which is a black and queer owned business I found through the Quiet Queers Craftalong directory. Brooke has some amazing pride colorways, which are currently sold out, because people showed her a TON of love this week (yay!). This colorway is Majestic, which is not a specifically pride colorway, but it is SO RAINBOW-Y and I love it so much! I’m making a standard sock with some cabling detail. I wanted something that kept it fun to knit but would still work with this crazily variegated yarn.
The pattern is why I had two cast on attempts. You can kind of see my original chart below the socks in the pic. I wanted to do this pattern when you slip st with the yarn in front. But in actually knitting it it wasn’t working. So I tore that out and cast on again. Then I tried a similar pattern to the Diamond in the Rough socks I just finished, but the patterning was too small, so I tinked that back and then I landed here. I think it will look really cool. Stockinette is still probably the absolute best option for this yarn, but to me stockinette socks are the knitting for bringing in a bag and working on while watching a sporting event or at rehearsal and honestly that just makes me a bit sad right now.
I got some other pride-themed yarn, an Asexual pride colorway from Fully Spun and a bisexual pride one from Merry and Mae. There’s also another yarn that I’m saving to make something special from a friend (don’t think they read the blog but if they do I’m keeping it a surprise).
