Also available as a kit from the KDD shop

Phillis Wheatley Peters

A bold, colourful pair of stockings designed to honour an eighteenth-century black poet: the first woman of African descent to publish a book in Britain and the United States. Wheatley-Peters Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) was a groundbreaking text in its own time, and had an important afterlife, posing, in its very existence, a powerful challenge to the racism of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world.

Wheatley-Peters life has recently been re-imagined in a wonderful sequence of poems by distinguished poet, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers - The Age of Phillis. (2020)

Yarn
John Arbon Exmoor Sock 4ply (60% Exmoor Blueface, 20% Corriedale, 10% Zwartbles, 10% Nylon; 200m/ 219yds per 50g skein)
1 skein of each of the following shades
A Bibble Bug
B Bell Heather

If knitting stockings, you will find it useful to wind and divide each skein of yarn in half (to ensure you get the most out of each skein). Note: these stockings were knitted in the small size to the length available from 1 skein of each shade. Longer stockings, with a larger foot size, may need an additional skein of both shades.

Needles and notions
Two below gauge-size circular needle(s) (any length) for cast on
Gauge-size needle(s) of your preferred type for working small circumferences
Above gauge-size needle(s) of your preferred type for working small circumferences
Spare gauge-size circular needle(s) for holding stitches
Stitch markers
Tapestry needle

Gauge
34 sts and 40 rounds to 10cm / 4in over stockinette on gauge-size needle(s)
Use 2.25mm needle as a starting point for swatching.

Sizes
Two sizes, S and L, to fit adult foot with 18-19 (20.5-21.5) cm / 7-7½ (8-8½) in circumference. Foot length is fully adjustable within the pattern. Pay attention to your round gauge, as you’ll use this to measure the finished length of the foot.

Thanks to Mimi Onyekwere (whose legs and feet are depicted here) and the rest of the KDD bluestocking team