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Winner 1: Cinderella's Secret Stockings
By Ruth Ramanan
Click here to download the pattern!
Bong! The clock struck twelve and Cinderella gasped in horror. She fled from the prince's arms, staggering slightly in the Vivienne Westwood platforms she had begged her godmother to let her wear to the ball, despite all the fairy tales of Naomi's fall from grace.
"Gothic gargoyles!" she cursed, as her ankle turned, and she was forced to leave the glass slipper behind at the foot of the palace's spiral staircase.
Hurtling down the granite-strewn driveway, she felt the rip and shred of the soles of her precious handknitted silk stockings. A thousand mice had worked a thousand days to make those!
Safe at last in her turnip coach, flying through the Highland countryside, she examined the tattered remains of her delicate hosiery and sighed a wistful sigh.
The next morning, having set the fires and polished the grates and scrubbed the hearths, she watched from her attic window as her ugly sisters departed to the city on a shopping spree. They would be gone all day, that was for sure.
Cinderella settled down by the kitchen stove to assess the damage. The once sparkling white lacy silk stockings had turned to a dark charcoal grey wool; the feet were beyond darning and the legs barely covered her knees. Pulling her worn tweed blanket round her shoulders with a sigh, she set to work.
She dug deep in her petticoat pocket and retrieved the fragile pink velvet ribbon which had laced her ballgown bodice. She picked up the stitches at the knee of her grey herringbone-stitched woollen socks and fashioned a row of wistful hearts, using oddments of hand-dyed luxury yarns she had swept up from her sisters' sewing room floor and stashed away with her dreams. "My Prince!" she sighed as she knitted. A row of eyelets followed, then a final romantic picot lace edging.
Cutting off the tattered remains of the feet, she knitted the heel flap with another heart tattooed where none but she would see it, when she cast aside her workboots at the end of a long day's labour. But her secret love would keep her warm all this long winter! Gathering her courage, she knitted on down the foot, continuing the grey herringbone on top, but stitching yet another intarsia heart underfoot, and in a final act of recklessness, a shimmering crown, in memory of her Prince.
Cinderella's life continued in shades of grey, as the harsh Scottish winter chilled her to the bone. But her feet were warm, and her heart was afire, and nothing the Ugly Sisters did or said could dull her spirit. Beneath her heavy skirts she wore her secret as a prize to be treasured.
Then, one spring day, there came a commotion at the door of the baronial mansion. Horsemen, and trumpeters, and a proud young Prince on a shining black stallion! Cinderella watched from her attic window. A courtier gave a speech - she couldn't quite catch what he said. But she could see clearly as he lifted aloft a single sculpted shoe, which flashed and glittered in the stark northern light - "My shoe!" she gasped.
Cinderella rushed downstairs and squeezed her way through the crowd. She was still wearing her indoor clogs, and her eldest sister frowned as she noticed a flash of red at the heel of her servant's grey stockings - what was that?
But greater shocks lay ahead, as Cinderella proffered her foot to the courtier, hoisting up her skirts, displaying hearts and lace and ribbon for all to see! And as she raised her foot, the Prince caught his breath to see the emblem of their love inscribed upon her sole! "My Princess!" he gasped.
"My Prince!" she smiled.
She slipped her foot inside the glass slipper - it was a perfect fit! The sun illuminated her legs and the wool appeared to glisten like silk, and the hearts and ribbon danced before the Prince's eyes as he bent to kiss her beautifully turned ankle and was enchanted.
The Ugly Sisters fainted.
And they all lived happily ever after.
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