Stag Beetles – the first in a series of Bugs

If you’re anything like me, you probably have a love / hate relationship with bugs. I say bugs because for me it includes all manner of creepy crawlies, with or without wings and regardless of how many legs. (Except for spiders – spiders are not bugs; they’re spiders.) Most bugs don’t bug me. I love to see bees and dragonflies, hovering in the garden, ladybugs on flowers and hear the drone of cicadas. But then I will mercilessly end the life of mosquitoes, flies or wasps if they come anywhere near me. Heaven forbid that I come across a big hairy centipede or a bunch of earwigs – an involuntary shiver of revulsion just went through me even as I write this. What would you call a bug racist?  A Species-ist? An Insect-ist? I’m sure its all about context – bugs outside good, bugs in the house bad, but unapologetically I remain a mass murderer of mosquitoes, fleas and ticks.

So what does my judgement paradigm on insects have to do with knitting? A lot apparently.  In my journey of stretching my creativity I decided to tackle designing mittens with bug motifs.  It wasn’t easy as part of the challenge to myself was to stay away from bugs that I really like (like bees). I just couldn't bring myself to glorifying fleas, I’d have to work up to that. So I started in a neutral zone, and picked a cool looking bug that I honestly didn’t know anything about and had never seen anywhere other than in a bug collection at a museum – the Stag Beetle.

Stag beetles are big, black and shiny with impressive antler-like mandibles – a perfect shape to render into a recognizable motif on a mitten. Diving into a little research I was surprised that stag beetles are from woodlands in Europe and southern England. My ignorant speciesism revealed! I just assumed that any bug that big and menacing looking came from a tropical jungle. Okay, so what else did I not know… Well, they live most of their lives (like 7 years!) underground as a grub, happily (I assume happily) munching away on rotting wood. I reminded of the childhood tongue twister – how much wood can a woodchuck chuck. Then by whatever body clock they follow they change into their more glorious form, dig they’re way to the surface and spend a few weeks between May and July, sucking sap and finding mates among the trees.

Elegant Stag Beetle gloves

For the design process, I decided to go fingerless on these gloves / mittens. Somehow fingerless gloves come out more elegant looking to me and remaining true to my insect-ist nature I felt even Stag beetles need all the help they can get to look appealing enough to wear. I chose black and blue as the contrasting colors as it turns out really striking and reminds me of how in nature shiny black often reflects blue. I kept the design simple and it’s a pattern that knits up very quickly. My next challenge is to pick a bug out of the neutral zone (but not a mosquito…)