Watercress and Color

This month's Mystery sock at SKA is indeed a mystery. The powers-that-be are demanding chartreuse for a sock that presumably will resemble its moniker, "Watercress," when all clues are collected and incorporated.

But it's not just the texture or the pattern: it's the color. Two or three miles up the road from where I prefer to live (if jobs and other mundane matters did not interfer) is the head of Newlan Creek. The Forest Service has managed to render the road untravelable for all but the most foolhardy (and they with four-wheel drive), but I can still ride or walk there. All that water that continues down to the reservoir and beyond starts with a spring . . . and around that spring is watercress. You can slurp (yes, slurp: there is no more correct way to describe getting on hands and knees and drinking) up water and nibble on cress. All that aside, it's the color of the plant that is important.

It IS NOT chartreuse!! It is emerald on the topside where the water hits and paler mint green on the bottom. The veins are dark and foresty, the total with occasional flecks of . . . yes, yellow!

I look at my cast-on and think of nothing so much as . . . lettuce. But of course, naming a pattern "Lettuce" would damage its appeal irreparably. . . so we will have a thousand or so earnest knitters with toes clad in identical socks, CHARTREUSE, of course. At least we will recognize each other on the streets.