AYoT: Heel Turn ( July)

The fifth month of A Year of Techniques was for working on heel-turns in cuff-down socks and featured the Antirrhinum (snapdragon) Socks by Rachel Coopey in her eponymous CoopKnits Socks Yeah! yarn which was previously used to knit Alex the Mouse. I didn't buy the summer kit and, though I found Socks Yeah to be a beautiful yarn, soft and with subtly heathered colours, I worry that it's too soft for socks (I prefer my socks to err on the side of bulletproof - if you have socks in Socks Yeah! I would love to hear how they're holding up) so I did a little stash diving and came up with a skein of Ripplescrafts' reliable sock in Sweet Greens, a colour like iceberg lettuce, that I got years ago in a "waifs and strays" promotion. 

I started with the small size, reasoning that it was close in stitch count to my default vanilla sock, I was using an ever so slightly thicker yarn (Socks Yeah! is a 3-ply, most sock yarns are 4-ply) so I'd get a slightly bigger end project, and the pattern is lacy and lace opens up to be larger than plain knitting. Yeah, that didn't work. I turned the heel on the first sock and knit for about an inch, tried it on, and decided it was not going to fit comfortably so I had to frog and start again with the medium size recommend for my foot size. 

Between having to knit the first sock almost twice and July being a short month for AYoT, for the first time the following month's pattern was released before I finished that month's. But I finished and that's the important thing. 

October KALs: Status Update

As you may recall, I signed up for two Knit-a-longs (KALs) both of which started on 1 October: Carol Feller's Mithral pullover KAL, and the Great British Socksaway KAL. I thought that by now I'd be a gibbering ball of stress, knowing that I've failed them both and wanting to go knit stockingette cowls for the rest of my life. Surprisingly, I'm doing rather well.

Tarsi Toddler Socks
I really hit the ground running with these darling little socks, finishing them in 11 days. I used every last bit of wool, ending with only inches left so the fact that they're ever so slightly too short in the foot is just a crying shame. Little Djinn loves them, but they just shift right off her little feet and no amount of pulling them up can keep them on. Oh well. I tried and I will keep on trying.

Mithral
At the same time, I knit the first clue of Mithral, which was for the front and back of the shoulders, from the neckline down to the bottom of the armholes (Clue 2 starts with joining the two pieces in the round - the picture above was a few rows into Clue 2). The wool is deliciously soft in my hands but, as I anticipated, that doesn't mean it's easy to work with. It's not difficult, I'm not fighting it, but I am having to check from time to time that I've got the actual stitch and not just fluff and it's very slippy on my needles. Between that and the eternal worry that the finished sweater won't fit or make me happy, and working on it has kind of become duty knitting - I want to finish and wear my lovely new sweater, but I can't be disappointed with the finished object if I never, you know, finish it. The good news is that I thought this KAL ran for the same length as the GBSocksawayKal, 6 weeks, but it actually goes into December! So as long as I do a little work on it here and there, I shouldn't fall too far behind. And, while I like wining, I don't need prizes.

Pheasant Socks
Remember how I said I had two suitable sock yarns for the wool from British sheep qualification for the GBSocksawayKAL? I was wrong. My other wool is, as I said, from the Faeroe Islands. Faeroe. Denmark. Somehow despite typing the word "Faeroe" my brain was still thinking "Orkney". Um, oops. I was faced with two problems here - I like to always have a pair of socks on the needle as "handbag knitting", eg something small enough to be portable and easy enough to be picked up and put down a lot, and I was feeling a lot of envy for the self-striping Pheasant colourway from West Yorkshire Spinner's Birds range. So when my friend Miss Morgan was visiting and short one ball of yarn for a hat she was knitting, I ordered a skein of Pheasant at the same time. Then there was a problem with placing the order, Miss Morgan got sick and left early, and it didn't show up until after she left. Oops. But the WYS pheasant, at least, is as wonderful as I hope.

For whatever reason, WYS doesn't have any publicity shots of the skeins knit up, just in the ball, and when I'd seen people's probjects they all seemed to be like the Blue Tit colourway - stripes but a a lot of mottling of colour between the stripes in the way that Opal does self-striping yarns. Opal is (was?) my default sock yarn, but I mostly thought of picking a colour as getting the least annoying one. Pheasant isn't like that: Pheasant has five tonal colours (rust, pumpkin, goldenrod, navy, and petrol (dark teal)) in clear stripes with a small stripe of grey between each colour. For me that works out as five rows of a colour, two rows of grey, five rows of the next colour. They are stunning. I decided to do a pair of very plain, vanilla socks with an afterthought heel, neither of which I've actually knit before.

I don't know how much is the stripes ("just one more!") and how much is the vanilla sock so it's just round and round, but I have never knit a sock that quickly. I kept making myself work on other things and I still knit one sock in four days. Remember how happy I was above to knit a pair of toddler socks in 11 days? 5.5 days each sock? I just knit a full size sock in 4 days. I put off starting the second one to work on Mithral. And then knit a hat and half a mitt instead - then I checked the timeline for the Mithral KAL and realized I could finish my socks like I want to do anyway. Someone please tell me I'm not the only person who won't let myself do A because I have to do B and so I do C instead?

This is my first time working an afterthought heel, though the pattern I picked, Fork in the Road Socks by Laura Neel, has you work the afterthought heel in the same order as if you were doing a heel-flap and gusset, after the leg and before the foot. I'm not sure I like it from a construction esthetic - and please note this is a critique of the style, not the pattern which is clear and results in a correctly sized sock - the unworn socks look...weird. They don't lie flat. There's a fair argument to be made that because feet are not flat, socks shouldn't be either, and I'll have to see how comfortable they are to wear before deciding if I'd knit them for a non-stripy yarn. For stripy yarns the afterthought heel is perfect as it keeps the stripes in perfect order.

And Chris looked at my beautiful Pheasant socks and requested a pair for himself. I showed him the colourways available and he picked Bullfinch with Cayenne (from their solid "spice rack" range) for contrast cuffs, heels, and toes. I also picked up Blue Tit for when I've knit those, with contrast Blueberry Bonbon ("sweet shop" range) and the limited edition Christmas colour Cherry Drop.

FO: Tryghed Hat

In my previous blogpost I talked about all the hats I want to knit and the beautiful yarns I have to knit them...and then I promptly went out and bought more wool to knit a completely different hat (This is why I shouldn't have a stash): Tryghed by Karie Westermann, from her Hygge collection

My gauge tends large so I went down a needle size and it took me about a day to knit it, checking only to see that the ribbing fit comfortably around my head, and finished that same day. Experienced knitters are waiting for the problem: I checked my circumference, but I didn't check my row height. I washed it, blocked it lightly, and waited for it to dry so I could try it on. Nowhere near long enough. Oops. Fortunately I'd not yet wove in the ends, so I let it dry completely, then unraveled past the lace row, added another 5 rows, then added a similar distance in the second ribbing section. Blocked it again, and voila! 

I didn't have a blocking implement ("dinner plate") the correct size to have the hat fold on the lace row, but it looks fine when modelled. The yarn is Jamieson's Shetland Heather Aran in "cedar" which is a Forrest green with magenta and teal spun through it - one of those colours you could never hope to photograph or describe, it has to be seem - and used 58g which is just over one ball.

I also picked up two balls each in the colours "oceanic" and "sholmitt" which is a natural grey to knit the Skovtur mitts, also from the Hygge collection.

Not a Good Month for Green

I follow a lot of knitting-related blogs, though I'd be hard-pressed to remember how or when I found any of them. One of them, the fabulously named Violently Domestic Hunter Hammersen recently published her second book, The Knitter's Curiosity Cabinet: Twenty Patterns Inspired by Vintage Botanical Prints. As the name suggests, it's a collection of ten sock and ten accessory patterns inspired in turn by ten botanical prints (one sock and one accessory pattern per print. Got it? good.). Having watched her blog for some time about its creation, I gave in to temptation and pre-ordered a digital copy (print copies will be available some time this summer) and had it in my hot little hands (aka iP*d pdf viewer) a few days latter. I pored over the patterns and the Narcissus Pseudo-Narcissus Socks (Daffodils) begged to be knit. The cheery green, the growing leaf pattern - what's not to love?

Well, the saga of finding an appropriate green sock yarn, for one. I searched high and low, coming up with very few options. On etsy, there was a seller in Ireland that seemed possible but a touch on the dark side, but my last etsy transaction had taken a week to ship and I was feeling gun-shy. A friend pointed me to a yarn shop that had a green sock yarn, but it looked a little too variegated and, well, I wasn't feeling the love. A dyer I follow on twitter had a green in a yarn I'm familiar with but it's a bit thin for my purposes so she offered to dye another base up for me, but I don't know how that went (pst, if you're reading, I'm still interested!). Finally, an indy dyer I'd been watching, Old Maiden Aunt restocked her shop to the point that I could bear to look through it.

This brings us to a familiar rant: I hate having to click on an item to see if it's in stock, especially if the answer is mostly "no". If I've clicked on 10 things and 7 or more (let alone all) of them are out of stock, there's a good chance I'm going to take my marbles, in this case my credit card, and go home. You want to show off your range of inventory? Mazel tov! I really am happy to see them. I'm excited to see yarns that may someday be mine, if I come back. But not at the expense of seeing the yarns that can actually be mine now. Especially if there's no way to say "ping me when this yarn/colour is back in stock!" As previous rants have established, quantity is also a plus.

Anyway, OMA had restocked her sock yarns and I pored over the colours and decided on "Emerald City" in a superwash BFL plus another rusty red of the same. If you're looking for blues and purple jewel tones, OMA is your woman, but I'm trying to cut back (my three finished socks are all purple). She's also got a lot of earthier tones if that's your thing. It's not mine so I spent a lot less time drooling over them. But I found my yarn and I ordered it and while it's not a shade I normally think of as "me" it's as beautiful as I could hope. Truly stunning.

I kept the yarn in the envelope until Sunday, when I untwisted my Emerald City skein, put it on my equally lovely umbrella swift, and started winding it with my ball winder. Around 85g into my 100g skein, it became hopelessly tangled. I spent the next hour untangling and winding the last 15g. Very disappointing, but I'm willing to believe it's a one-off. I wouldn't even mention it except it's part of The Saga of the Green Socks. Things are finally going according to plan: I had my yarn wound (in two 50g balls even!) and my pattern queued up, and now to select my needles. My 1.75mm carbon fibre DPNs are in the middle of finishing my second Wishbone Sock and my 2.0mm are still holding my languishing Zum Dirndl socks. My 2.25mm were too loose, leaving my 1.5mm needles:

Isn't it beautiful? Mind you, that's after I had to rip back one of the leafs and reknit it after I *ahem* made an error while watching Battlestar Galactica. A couple rows after taking that picture, just as the pattern was starting to come together for me, I tried it on and... couldn't get it over my heel. Horror. Dismay. Despair. Waah.

Options? Order duplicate needles in other sizes, finish knitting my other socks in progress (or continue knitting the other socks while waiting for duplicate needles...)or add more stitches - tricky because the ribbing on the cuff flows into the leaf pattern. I'm probably going to split the difference - finish my Wishbone Socks (closest to done and I don't want to go much larger on needle size) and add two stitches in the back or inside seam. Thoughts?

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.

Socktoberfest 2011

It is finally Socktober and that means my first ever Socktoberfest! I know most of you aren't as excited as I am, but as I've decided to be a great knitter of socks (they're faster and cheaper than sweaters but still have potential daily use unlike shawls) having a community ready to uber-obsess about knitting socks is pretty darn nifty.

Socks in Progress:
- Zum Dirndl for me, using Wollmeise Twin in a gorgeous blue. I've turned the heel and am starting up the leg which means adding another three charts, each with a different repeat length. These are officially out of the "mindless knitting" category which is why I've cast on...
- Brainless for my husband, using Araucania Ranco Multy in Fern which is a perfect colour for October, a medley of greens and oranges just like the world outside.
Both socks are from the same designer, Yarnissima, and have the same elements but rendered differently. Both socks have a cable along each side, but mine are twisted and symmetrical and his are regular and identical. My gussets had a bit of lace and more twisted stitches, his don't. It's a bit odd doing the complicated socks first, and then the easy ones, but it adds to the "mindless" aspect of the knitting.

In other October knitting news, there was a Gansey Festival (conference) in Inverness over the weekend, celebrating all things Gansey (also known as Guernsey in other parts of the world British Isles). The website was a bit confusing, saying there was free admission to X, Y, and Z and listing various admission rates (weekend, daily, half-daily) and fees for taking the classes. I figured I'd go and see what there was to see and hope to purchase some yarn: I want to knit a sweater but haven't yet committed to a pattern. I wrote down yarn requirements for two projects I want to start: a hooded scarf and the Sade hat and mittens for the Google+ October KaL. Did I purchase yarn for either of these projects? Of course not! I bought sock yarn (thus tying it all back to Socktoberfest): three skeins of Ripples Crafts BFL/nylon sock - two stripy skeins for Chris and one purple skein for me. There wasn't enough bulky yarn in one colourway to knit the scarf and the only worsted weight yarn for the hat and mittens was extra scratchy and not something I'd want against my skin. I'll keep looking.

Other than yarn purchased, how was the Gansey Fest? Well, I think it would've been better without Chris. He got home and swore never to do that again, meaning go anywhere near the hospital grounds where the conference was being held. He didn't eat before we left, food there was expensive and limited, it was drizzling the whole time we were walking around (getting there and leaving - the conference was indoors), and he was very grumpy. So we wandered around the market, had some food, and left.

The Other Bridesmaid Shawls

Flower Basket Shawl - Evelyn A. Clark
King Cole "Riot" - Magic 404 - 100g/296m - 70% Acrylic, 30% wool
I wasn't sure when Miss Krissy was going to find my blog, what with it being linked to hers*, so I didn't want to post pictures before I gave it to her, but now I can! The pattern knit up fairly quickly. I wasn't able to memorize the pattern until chart B, but once I got there I could "see" the lace and how each row followed the proceeding row and it went very quickly from there. I added a few extra repeats (11 in total) to make it an actual shawl, not just a shoulder-warmer and used most of two rows in doing so. The second skein of yarn had some knots in it, always frustrating, and split when I was trying to untwist it which was even more frustrating. The colours were similar to the ones Krissy wanted to dye her hair for the wedding, and worked out better than planned as she didn't put any green in her hair but some of the colours in her hair took a greenish tinge as they faded and bleed. Her youngest doesn't like to wear warm clothes but gets cold, and Miss Krissy found the shawl useful to tie around herself and the baby when she's wearing her.

I understand why people advise against knitting lace in variegated yarn as, as the rows got longer and the colour-pools shallower, the pattern got a bit lost. I enjoyed the pattern and may knit another one, in solid or semi-solid for myself. For Miss Krissy, I think the colours are more important than the lace.



Annis - Susanna IC
Patton's Grace, Artessano 100% Alpaca 4-ply
And this is Miss Laura's shawl. I actually knit it twice as the first one didn't look right after I blocked it - the needles were too large for the yarn, which created a nice drape but made it impossible to weave in the ends in the middle of the fabric. Since it's mostly knit in short rows, I couldn't change skeins of yarn at the edge. I bought two skeins of Alpaca in a colour-way that I felt would be even more appropriate for Miss Laura and knit it on smaller needles and the pile of the yarn and smaller stitches worked better for hiding the ends I had to weave in. I wanted to make it bigger than the pattern but was worried about running out of yarn again so I didn't, and it turned out a bit on the small side - definitely a scarf and not a shawl, and the top rolls, but it is very suited to Miss Laura's personality. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of Miss Laura's shawl before I gave it to her and I have no specific pictures of any of the shawls after gifting them.

* she didn't find it until I specifically gave her the link today. Hi, Miss Krissy!

Ginko Leaf Shawl for Miss Rachel

Ginko Shoulderette Shawl - Maggie Magali
Artesano 4 ply 100% superfine alpaca - 50g/187m - 100% alpaca

I am making shawls for each of my bridesmaids (though not as their thank you presents) and this is the one for Miss Rachel. The knitting itself was easy, though I ocassionally had to tink back half a row when I forgot the pattern mirrors from the centre, unlike the geometric shawls I've been knitting where you just repeat the same pattern again. Not a difficult concept, just one I seemed to have trouble keeping in my head.

I added one extra repeat of the pattern to make it a smidge larger and, of course, ran out of yarn one row before the bind off. Fortunately the shop where I bought it still had the same dye-lot in stock, but I had to set it aside for a few days while waiting for that, and then when I went to block it I realized that I would need at least 3 times as many t-pins as I own (I mentioned I'm new to this whole "blocking" thing, right?) as I can't use my wires to shape the leaves, so I had to wait another almost week for those to arrive.

It took an hour to pin it out and I still could have used another 25 pins to good effect but it's good enough to government work. Hopefully this will dry quickly as the first of my wedding guests are showing up tonight - 3 days before originally planned because they decided Paris is not the place for them - and I told Noah (who can't afford to take all the time off so he's telecommuting) that he could use my office. My itty-bitty, little office, one third of which is taken up by Wedding Stuff and now another third is this shawl.

It is a beautiful pattern and the yarn is soft a lovely but I think, for me, I'll stick to easier-to-block geometric patterns for the time being.