Motoring Madness

Motoring Madness is the 9th pattern to appear in Lit Knits. The fingerless mitts are based on Kenneth Grahame's book Wind In The Willows, which was published in 1908.

After reading the book, I knew that the pattern just had to be based on Mr. Toad. There are many characters that appear in the book, but in my opinion, Mr. Toad is the most memorable. I decided that Toad would need driving gloves, which is why the project is fingerless mitts.

Mr. Toad is known to be a reckless driver, so the pattern is meant to look like Mr. Toad has erratically driven over the mitts. Twisted stitches help give the car tracks strong definition. There is a missing rib in the top and bottom ribbing on the mitts so that the tracks remain uninterrupted.

I actually knit this pattern twice. After finishing the first pair and putting them on, I noticed despite the pattern being centered on the mitt, once the mitts were on, the pattern curved towards the thumb. To correct the look of the pattern when the mitts are worn, the pattern is knit slightly off-center on the top of the mitt.

The neatest thing about this shoot was that about 10 minutes before the we started taking pictures, the model and I went to the thrift store and found the brown shirt and jacket that he is wearing. I kid you not. We couldn't have found a better outfit to match the gloves, book, and suitcase.

This shoot was done a few hours after the Tomfoolery shoot and it remained a blistering 108°F/ 42°C. My model deserves an award. Even though he was sweating it out for an hour as we took pictures, you'd never know it. It's hard to believe it was as hot as it was because in the pictures, the model made the day look enjoyable. (It wasn't. It really, really wasn't.)

In the book, whenever Mr. Toad doesn't have a car, he just pretends that he is driving. I knew that one of the shots I had to get was to have my model pretending to drive, just like Mr. Toad. The first few shots looked too posed, so I said, "Mr. Toad committed grand theft auto. You need to pretend like you are stealing a car!"

Here's Mr. Toad gunning it

The next shot was exactly what I had envisioned.