FO: Knotty Honeymoon Socks

Back in December I announced that my New Year's Resolutions would include learning new sock techniques. Yarn Harlot keeps pointing out that socks are a small canvas on which to practice (or show off) knitting techniques. Don't have time to commit to a fair isle sweater? Knit a pair of stranded socks! Want to play around with cables? We have sock patterns for that, too! But I specifically wanted to concentrate on the different ways of constructing socks: casting on, turning the heel, binding off. For my first socks I selected Nancy Bush's Knot Socks from Ann Budd's Sock Knitting Master Class and took them with me as my Honeymoon Knitting Project*.

The Knot Socks called for three techniques I'd not tried before: Double Start CO, Dutch or Square Heel, and Three Point Toe. I really like the Double Start CO. It creates a slightly decorative edge and the stitches cast on in pairs making it really easy to count and make sure one has the correct number of stitches before joining in the round. I absolutely love the Square Heel. The slip stitch "ribbing" extends through the short rows for turning the heel and offers a little extra padding and extra reinforcement to the heels. Cute and practical! I am less enamoured of the Three Point Toe. I knit a little long in the pattern so, rather than rip back, I increased the rate of decrease stitches and the three points come together under my toes. It's not uncomfortable, but I'm not aesthetically pleased. I'll try it again, starting the decreases when I'm supposed to, and see if I feel any more warmly toward it, but I predict in the future, should a pattern call for a Three Point Toe that I will be substituting a different one.

As for the cabled "knot" pattern, I'm not 100% satisfied. I felt like the cables were "cheating" and that a double-sided cable would have created the same effect but more in keeping with the illusion of plaiting four individual strands together. I'm sorry I can't explain it better than that. I didn't want to play around with the cables in the middle of knitting a pair of socks, but should I make these again, or knit something similar, I'll sort it out to my satisfaction.

I was also less than completely enthusiastic about the pattern being isolated on the front with the ribbing on the back of the leg. In a perfect work the knots could have been worked all the way around and then flown smoothly into the slip-stitch heel. I don't know how that would actually work with the heel, but my inner perfectionist wanted it. At the very least, I would've preferred that the extant ribbing flowed into the slip stitch heel.

These are not intended as criticisms of the designer or the pattern. I enjoyed knitting my socks and I enjoy wearing them (they're lilac btw, not the blue pictured though I like the blue more than the actual colour). I'm sorting my feelings out so that I know what I like, what does or doesn't feel "right" about a given design or construction. I prefer all-over designs; I prefer heels that flow from the pattern. I prefer a more complicated cable that follows rules I invented in my head to an easier to describe one that gives identical results. That leads me to my only deliberate modification: I mirrored the cables on the second sock to create a symmetrical pair.

~ * ~ * My husband talked me down to packing three pairs of socks to take on our honeymoon. I got through one Knot Sock and started the second. I consistently over-pack knitting projects.

Flurries Cowl and the Great Cowl KAL

You might think that, with two pairs of socks in progress, a hooded scarf on the needles, and yarn either acquired for specific projects (a sweaters for my husband and one for my self; mittens for Aged Parent) or less specific projects (socks! socks socks socks socks, socks! Well, at least three pairs) that I wouldn't be looking for new projects. Though, to be fair, if you actually thought that you're probably not a knitter or otherwise crafty.

In my defense, I didn't go looking for patterns, but one (well, five really) jumped out at me from behind a bush (RSS feed) and, what can I say other than that I'm a sucker for a free pattern, especially one that's only free for a limited time? I've recently downloaded The Sexy Knitter's thummed Muffalette, Kate Davies' Fair Isle Mucklemuff and Mary Jane Mucklestone's matching Muckle-mitts*, all Christmas or New Year's presents and thus they free for a limited time.

Those are not my current projects (though they've all been queued because they're lovely and I don't have a single muff** and now I have very different patterns for two of them!). My current project is a slightly different proposition: Liz Abinante of Feministy is doing The Great Cowl KAL, a series of five cowl KALs with the first one Flurries Cowl currently being free. If you knit it and submit a picture by the deadline, 8 February, you get the pattern for the next cowl for free. The cowls are all listed in the original post, it's not a mystery game, and if you miss a cowl you can buy the subsequent pattern and still earn the following ones. Isn't that nifty? Add in that the first cowl calls for Brioche stitch, one I've been wanting to try, and I had to cast on:

I've decided I really like the concept of giving a pattern away for free for a limited time, and not just because I like free stuff***: it's a reward for fans who pay attention, a way to attract new people as your existing fans tell their friends about this limited-time offer, and, importantly, when the pattern is no longer free, when you're asking strangers to pay for it, there are already a slew of projects and feedback with a variety of yarns alternatives and proven modifications. You basically turn your fans into Beta Testers (not to be confused with test knitters who provide a valuable service, one worthy of remuneration) and increase the value of a given pattern.

~ * ~

* if you read further through her blog, May Jane Mucklestone does a little tutorial on after-thought thumbs, well worth the read: prepping, picking up, and fixing holes

** don't be dirty

*** free doesn't necessarily correlate with "good", know what I mean? Also, I am entirely in favour of paying designers for patterns I like so that they can afford to design more things that I like. It's win-win.

Lots of Yarn

My husband and I returned last night from our lovely Madeiran honeymoon* and I have lots of yarn related things to catch up on, though very little knitting to show for my time.

First off, my Jameison & Smith sweater yarn arrived. I spent the first week of the New Year glaring at everyone who rang the doorbell who wasn't delivering my sweater yarn which, surprisingly, was a lot of people. (My husband orders a lot of things, especially business supplies, online - Inverness may be the hub of the Highlands but it's not exactly a booming metropolis. Also, living without a car, it's a lot easier to have things come to us.) It didn't show up until Saturday, while I was running around trying to get everything ready to have downstairs painted whilst we were gone. So, Yay! it arrived and I no longer needed to worry about it and Boo, by the time it arrived I didn't have time to do more than smoosh the package and pet the wool once or twice and I will continue to be too busy for a while yet.

One of the frowned-at deliveries was yarn (which really was a Yay! except it wasn't the built-up-in-my-mind yarn), from The Sock Yarn Shop, owned by the lovely Pip (and she's currently doing a yarn give-away on her blog). This really wasn't frowned at at all, not even a little bit. How can you frown at sock yarn? I bought four skeins of yarn: 100g of Schoppel Wolle Admiral in black, for work socks; two 50g skeins of Reggia Extra-Twist Merino in "Petrol" which is a teal for me; and a 100g skein of Opal's new Vincent van Gogh in Red Vineyard for my husband. I've used Opal before for my Monkey socks and mitts but the other yarns are all new to me. Pip also threw in a wee little tote. These were all purchased with my money, earned at my job, which made both me and my husband very happy.

That was before I left. We didn't find yarn in Madeira (though I kept seeing twisted up cotton scarfs in shop windows and thinking they were hanks of yarn and getting excited), though people were selling hand-knit things such as hats and ponchos. None of the people I saw knitting spoke English and I don't speak Portuguese so I wasn't able to ask them where they purchased their yarn. Sadness. Embroidery is really big in Madeira, but I didn't see anywhere to buy thread or even little "embroider your own hanky" kits. I would've liked to buy a kit, too**.

We flew in and out of Glasgow and I was delighted, on the way back, to stop in The Yarn Cake which handly is both a very nice yarn shop and a lovely wee café. My first order of business was to exchange my KnitPro 3.25mm interchangeable needles that snapped. She let me exchange them for metal ones as I'm now leery of the colourful birch needles, at least on the smaller sizes. I also got metal tips in 3.75mm, and the rosewood "square" needles in 6.5mm to fill in the empty spaces in the DellaQ interchangeable needle organizer that my wonderful husband gave me for Christmas. I was hoping to pick up some 1.75mm circs for sock knitting but she doesn't carry anything bellow 2.00mm, obviously not suffering from my large-gauge-despite-feeling-like-I-have-a-death-grip-on-the-needles problem.

For Christmas I knit an aran hat for Aged Parent (my FiL) out of Shilasdair's Baby Camel yarn (modelled bellow by my husband). He had a store-bought aran cap in a natural cream but he'd at various times complained that it was itchy and not his colour, but that he needed a thick, warm, doubled over at the brim hat to keep his ears warm (he'd almost lost them to frost bite, in Canada, during WWII). This (outrageously expensive) sea-coloured baby camel yarn seemed just the thing with which to replace it. He cried when he unwrapped it (the men in my husband's family are emotional) and has since told everyone, every single person he's met that I knit his hat and isn't it amazing. This man deserves more hand knit gifts, starting with a pair of mitts in a similar colour-way of Shilasdair Aran lambswool for his birthday. Which is Friday (today's Wednesday) though I won't see him till Sunday.

I also finally, four years after first seeing the pattern and thinking Want!, I finally bought yarn to knit the Pfeiffer Falls hooded scarf: seven skeins of New Lanark Mills Aran in Tartan Green.

~ * ~

* more on that later

** I did buy two hankies, but that's for the honeymoon post.

NYR: Pattern Selection

Having resolved to knit two sweaters (one for me, one for DH) and add to my sock repertoire, I have spent a fair amount of time reading my sock and sweater books, flipping through magazines, and, most of all, creating filter after filter in Ravelry. Patterns were matched to yarns, measurements and meterages were determined, yarns were selected and discarded based on price, reviews, colours and finally availability. This brings me to a tangent:

On the whole, having an online store reject attempts to add quantities of yarn not actually in possession of the shop is a good thing. It would, however, be better if stock quantities could be determined prior to trying to add them to my "basket". As opposed to manually adding each colour I like only to determine, time and again, they don't have the requisite quantities. In half a dozen colours, plus a few I didn't really like that much anyway. Had that effort resulted in purchasing yarn my irritation would have been tempered by the joyful anticipation of nice, affordable yarn. As it is, I'm just irritated.

But I have selected my patterns and my yarns: for my sweater I'm trying February Fitted Pullover by Amy Herzog. Even as a non-knitter of sweaters, her name had been increasingly familiar with very positive associations. She has a few designs that don't interest me, but when I read the descriptions I found they weren't knit with me in mind (sweaters for the bottom-heavy, rather than my very full hour-glass). It's a nice that she and I agree on styles both for and not for my figure. I ultimately decided against a sweater from Little Red in the City as they are none of them quite what I want for my first sweater. Ysolda's day will come.

For my DH I picked Terry's Pullover by Carol Fuller from Interweave Knit's Holiday Gifts 2009. I found it in my Ravelry filtering, recognized it as the one Socktopus just knit for her husband, and it was already high in my Ravelry queue - despite going through yesterday and significantly reducing the number of items in said queue. My husband has a generously sized nose and the shawl collar should allow easy clearance for pulling it on and off.

For both sweaters I ordered Jamieson & Smith's Shetland Aran, in a tealy-blue for me and a dark sage green for DH. I used their Shetland Supreme for my Sheep Heid Tam so it's a brand with which I am familiar and I like the idea of knitting with affordable wool from local(ish) sheep (given that my efforts for even more affordably priced Knit Picks yarn from the mothership were for naught). Now it's just the joyous anticipation of wool and the finishing the projects in progress so I can start my sweaters.

Except it's the Thursday night between Christmas and the New Year so there's a very real chance that J&S are closed for the holidays. Even if they are open, I don't think they can get my order put together, packed up, and ready to go out in time for Friday's last collection given that the Shetland Islands aren't exactly a renowned transportation hub. Saturday is Hogmanay, New Year's Eve, traditionally a bigger deal than Christmas*, and New Year's day falls on a Sunday which means the British bank holiday is observed on Tuesday - 2 January, Monday, is a Scottish bank holiday. So, assuming J&S is open tomorrow and they can process my order before final collection, the absolute earliest I can expect my happy parcel is Thursday the 5th. Did I mention we're leaving for our honeymoon on the 8th?

Fortunately, I have the yarn for my next sock project: Knot Socks by Nancy Bush from Sock Knitting Master Class (see, a pattern from one of my new books!) using some purple Araucania Ranco that I purchased for myself when getting the replacement yarn for to knit replacement Brainless socks for my DH who accidentally felted the first pair. The pattern is cuff-down with a cast-on (double start), heel turn (square), and toe (star) I've not tried before.

~ * ~

* Christmas was actually banned in Scotland for almost 400 years, until the 1950s, because it was considered a "papist" holiday. Presbyterians really don't like papists.