The Knitting Pirate

Monday was a terrible day in which nothing went right, so I was determined to make Tuesday a good day in which everything went wonderfully. I started off by wearing my new socks – because really, how can I be in a bad mood if I’m wearing new socks? And on the way home from work, I stopped at With Yarn In Front to show them off… and to pick out some cotton yarn. My swornbrother Michael is going to become an uncle in just a few more weeks, and I thought it might be nice for me to knit a little something for the baby.

I browsed around the store for a little while and eventually decided to get a ball of Plymouth Sweet Caroline, a 100% cotton, worsted-weight yarn. Three strands are solid-coloured, and the fourth is variegated in the standard baby colours. It was a tossup between a colourway that was mostly pink with the one variegated strand, or the white one that I got. I went with white because I don’t know if Michael’s sister is a fan of baby-pink! The yarn came with a free pattern for this lacy Baby Bunny Hat, perfect for a little girl to wear in the springtime.

The pattern is written for the hat to be knit flat and seamed, but I decided to knit it in the round. The WS rows are only purling back with no lace, so I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult.

“Cast on 101 stitches,” the pattern said. I got out my DPNs and measured out a length of yarn for my usual long-tail cast-on, very carefully counted out 100 stitches, and knit a full round before I realized that I’d forgotten to add stitch #26 to the fourth needle. Rip, rip.

I cast on again, 101 stitches this time, and knit a full round before I realized that the first row of the edging is actually the wrong side of the work, and when the pattern said “knit” I should have purled because I’m working in the round instead of flat. Hooray for reading comprehension! …so I cheated. I turned the work inside out. Voila, a purl round! Then I worked back the other way, and I used the tail from the cast-on to fill in the little hole that was left.

This might be the least terrible cotton yarn I’ve ever worked with. I never find cotton to be as nice on the hands as wool, but I knit the edging and a full pattern repeat last night and my hands aren’t complaining. In addition, the yarn is theoretically machine-washable (excellent for baby clothing!), but the label had no care instructions. Cold-cold? Delicate cycle? I want to include a little tag with the gift, but I don’t know what to write on it!

Drumroll, please.

And now, on center stage, the Knitting Pirate is pleased to present, in their debut appearance… HANDSPUN SOCKS!

410 yards of two-ply yarn, spun from 4.4 ounces of BFL from FreckleFaceFibers on Etsy, became this pair of toe-up, short-row-heel, socks for myself! I started them in the end of July, 2009, when Janis and I challenged each other not to just spin yarn, but to actually knit with it, too. We both decided on socks. I decided to go with toe-up, because I didn’t know how far the yarn would go, but I knew I wanted to get as much out of it as I could. I used Wendy’s Generic Toe-Up Sock Pattern, substituting a figure-eight toe.

One of the neat things about toe-up socks is that there’s really no need for a gauge swatch; you can just use the toe as a swatch. The yarn seemed thinner than most commercial sock yarns I’ve knit with, so I decided to use size 0 needles. I started with my usual sixteen-loop toe, knit until I thought it fit my foot, realized that it was too large, and horrified my audience by nonchalantly ripping it out and starting over. “But you’ve knit so much already!” they said. “Isn’t it frustrating to have to begin again?” I explained that I’d rather lose an hour or so of knitting, than put in the time it takes to knit the entire pair and end up with socks that don’t fit. It’s possible that my horrified audience didn’t entirely understand.

(Lesson learned: When using a toe-up toe as a swatch, work the increases only to the point where the toe fits over your first four toes. You can leave the pinky out, it’s okay. She won’t mind, because in the end the socks will fit much, much more snugly around your foot.)

The socks do fit perfectly, thank goodness. They are a little tight to get on, but once I have them in place they fit me like, well, like socks. No bagging around the ankles, no sagging around the legs, and no extra material around the foot. I hope they wear as well as they fit!

Sometimes it’s not knitting which bothers my arms (even without the Knitting Olympics). Sometimes it’s work, and work has to take precedence until someone wants to match my salary with a knitting job. Well, last week I was busier than normal at work, and as a result, my arms are sore from wrists to elbows. This coming week is looking as if it will be just as busy… so there might not be much knitting to write about in the next few days.

I’ve been taking naproxen and sleeping with wrist braces on… but hopefully I’ll be able to get a few stitches in here and there.

My mom had surgery this week, and I wasn’t able to be there the day of it – so I went to visit her as soon as she got home and was up for visitors. She seems to be doing pretty well, all things considered. We sat and chatted while I worked on the Handspun Sock, and she showed me a gorgeous scarf that her friend knit for her as a long-distance hug. Not just any friend, but her friend from college who taught her to knit in the first place, without whom I wouldn’t be knitting now! It’s made up of a bunch of different yarns from her stash, in a bunch of different colourways, which blend together beautifully to make something which is very much Mom’s style.

I don’t have a picture of the scarf, but I do have this picture of the nieceling wearing the Bunny Sweater that Mom knit for her! The bunny is still missing a pompom tail, but that’s all right. And now that Mom’s done knitting the kid-size sweater, she’s thinking of knitting one for herself. Does anyone have any suggestions for a structured cardigan or coat that might work? Something suitable for office-wear?

Then Mom totally made my day by asking for a pair of socks to wear with blue jeans, although in the past she’s said that she wasn’t interested in them as she tends to wear very thin nylon socks. But the gloves I made her, and the scarf from her friend, are working to change her mind. Not to mention Pirate-Husband, who chimed in to say that he’d been skeptical about handknit socks until he got a pair, and now he is all about the socks. I would be thrilled to make socks for my mom! I just need a few measurements, I told her, and then I will surprise her with when she gets the finished pair. This is going to be fun! Hey Mom, do you want plain socks? Stripey socks? Socks with a fancy stitch pattern?

As much as I think it would be great fun to join the Knitting Olympics and/or the Ravelympics, I’m not letting myself do it. The idea of the Knitting Olympics is to cast on a project during the Opening Ceremonies and finish it before the torch goes out, something that would be a challenge for you to finish in the seventeen days of the Olympics. There is one exception; the Ravelympics has an event for finishing a work in progress that hasn’t been touched in over a month. I briefly thought about joining that one, for Napramach.

But no.

Firstly, I hate knitting to deadlines. I get all stressed about it and the rest of my life suffers while I commit myself to doing nothing but knitting in all of my spare time. Sure, sometimes that happens – like last year, when I finished a baby blanket the night before going to meet the new baby. Given how grumpy I got doing that, I’m not going to sign myself up for doing it on purpose.

And secondly, whenever I knit to deadlines, I have a tendonitis flare-up in my arms and then I have to take a break from everything for a couple of weeks.

I will be cheering you on from the sidelines, you crazy knitters who are going for gold medals. You make it look so easy, and your work is all so beautiful! And of course, I will be watching the Olympic athletes in Vancouver. Figure skating has always been my favourite of the winter events; I wanted to be a figure skater when I was a little kid, and part of me still holds on to that dream. They make it look so easy, especially in pairs skating where he seems to effortlessly lift her above his head, gliding around the rink holding her up with just one hand.

Here’s to all of us – the knitters, the athletes, the participants and the cheerers-on – here’s to the best in all of us, however we may express it.

Last weekend, while my house in Virginia was buried in more than two feet of snow, I went to Canada. Ironically, the weather there was beautiful and clear, if really cold. It was even too cold for me to want to skate on the canal. Instead, my sworn-sister the Ninja and I, along with our friend Amy, took an afternoon to visit yarn stores.

Our first stop was Wool N’ Things in Orleans, where I was thrilled to find some of the discontinued Jo Sharp Silkroad DK Tweed, the same yarn that I used to knit my Fleep-Tops. I picked up two skeins in Cedar, a gorgeous dark green with red and yellow flecks. They’ll probably become another pair of Fleeps, as backup for when my first pair inevitably wears out. The green totally doesn’t match my dark blue winter coat, but it’s time for a new coat anyway. Perhaps something in green, or preferably black. Black goes with everything.

Then we headed over to Yarn Forward in Ottawa proper, where I bought two skeins of this super-soft (and superwash!) Lang Merino DK in a gray so dark it’s almost black. My first thought was that it might make a pair of Fleeps for Michael, but he wanted something thicker and tweedier, so I’m going to use it for a pair of classy office armwarmers for myself and pick up some Rowan Felted Tweed in as black as it comes for him. Not that I mind being able to use this pettably soft stuff for myself, not at all! I am thinking about making something like these Cafe au Lait Mitts from SnapperKnits, or perhaps I will come up with my own pattern for them.

I did have a disappointment this year: My old Stellar Toque, now over four years old, may be nearing retirement. It’s gotten stretched out and too large, and lets the wind through to my ears. I am thinking that before next Winterlude, I will knit a colourwork hat with earflaps and line it with fleece. We saw many of them in the Byward Market when we were there for the Stew Cook-Off on Friday, and I was seriously tempted to buy one – but why buy what I can knit? Pirate-Husband suggested that I could salvage the Stellar Toque by knitting earflaps onto it and lining it with fleece, instead of making a whole new hat. I could also felt it a little to shrink it and make it more windproof.

Sometimes it’s difficult to choose a traveling project without casting on for something new, and sometimes it’s really obvious. Fortunately for me, this is one of the obvious times! On Wednesday I’ve a four and a half hour train trip, followed by an eight hour drive on Thursday, and then a long weekend in Ottawa with my sworn-sister, the Knitting Ninja and some of our friends.

In preparation, I cast on last night for the second of the Sibling Socks, an easy project to bring along that not only won’t take up too much space, but also won’t be too hard to work on while drinking beer and playing games. I haven’t traveled by train since I was in college, and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to knit without getting motion-sickness. I’m going to give it a try!

Here’s something that you might find hard to believe: I turned down a trip to WEBS. One of the potential routes to Canada puts us in the neighborhood of America’s Yarn Store, and I actually said “let’s not go this year.” We’ve stopped at WEBS for the past few years, so I feel as though I’ve accomplished my pilgrimage as a knitter. I really don’t need any impulse yarn, and I’m sure to buy some if we stop. And… we’re going to visit yarn stores in Ottawa. Not that the exchange rate is super-favorable to American dollars at the moment, but I’d rather see if I can pick up a souvenir from another country that I might not be able to get in the States.

Finally, a completed project to show! Ribbed socks for Michael, in Cascade Heritage Paints #9922. He bought the yarn for me back in November, and I broke the queue to cast on for them.

This is my new favorite sock yarn. It’s smooth, yet squooshy. It got a little splitty around the SSKs, but so does most yarn, since working that stitch takes some of the twist out. The colors were evenly distributed without any garish pooling. There was a little bit of pooling over the gusset, which is expected, and a vague hint of spiraling down the foot.

It’s a simple pattern, but I am considering writing it up for publication anyway. Like the Highwayman Armwarmers, it would be a freebie. This time around I would use a Creative Commons license, most likely Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike – in other words, you can distribute the pattern as long as I get credit; you can’t sell the pattern itself but you can sell the items you knit from it; and you can make changes and distribute them under the same license. I’m a big supporter of Creative Commons licensing; why keep something to myself if there’s no good reason to do so?

(Speaking of the Highwayman Armwarmers, one of my readers was kind enough to inform me of a typo in the pattern. It’s been corrected and a new version has been uploaded, both here and on Ravelry.)

On Tuesday night, I stayed up too late in order to turn the heel on my second handspun sock. I may have had some difficulty counting, though I hate to admit it. A short-row heel is not hard to do, so I don’t know why I was having such trouble. With thirty-six stitches, I just needed to work back and forth, wrapping the next-to-last stitch as the rows got shorter, until there were twelve wrapped on each side and twelve unwrapped in the middle. So back and forth I went, keeping a mental count: One, one. Two, two. Three, three… until I got up to Eight, Seven. How did that happen? I tinked back until everything matched and tried again, and got it right the second time.

The reason for wanting the heel turned Tuesday is that on Wednesday, I was finally able to rejoin my old crowd, the Reston Stitch ‘n Bitch, for their third anniversary celebration. We had about 40 knitters (and crocheters, and embroiderers) there and it was a wonderful time! I can’t say that I got too much knitting done, but at least it was all stockinette and I don’t have to worry too much about messing that up. We meet at Cosi, which was as warm and welcoming as I remembered. Our group takes up the entire back of the restaurant! Towards the end of the evening, our organizer Marie organized cheesecake for everyone.

I think I am going to have to make more of an effort to get back there on some Wednesdays. Maybe not every week, since I do have to stay late at work in order to get to Reston at the right time… but some weeks. Yeah. I miss everyone. It was awesome to go back.

On Sunday, I brought the second of the handspun socks to a community meeting. The meeting was a nightmare, which allowed me to crank away on the sock until I was afraid that I’d actually knit too far up the foot, and I had to put it away. At that point I actually started to participate in the meeting, which may have been a mistake – I can see now why so many people in my neighborhood just don’t get involved!

Back at home, I measured and was happy to conclude that the foot was still about an inch short. I worked on it while watching the Vikings/Saints game, and then on Monday evening I settled in to knit the short-row heel. Well, I got about eight or ten rows in and something went wrong. I couldn’t tell what – perhaps I forgot to wrap one of the stitches, or maybe I forgot how to count as I knit. Either way, I was tired so I decided not to stress over it; I put it down and went to bed. I’ll fix it up this evening.

On the spinning front, this lovely fiber from LakeHouse Loft was my birthday present to myself. It’s six ounces of Corriedale in randomly-patterned colors, and I’m not yet sure how I’m going to spin it. I could do a three-ply sock yarn, or a slightly heavier weight for a matching hat and fleep-top set. Most of my queue is hats and socks, with the occasional scarf or dishcloth in there as well. What can I say – I like socks!