The Knitting Pirate

I just love how the stitches of the pattern flow into the stitches of the heel flap. The flap itself was easy enough, once I remembered to purl through the back loop on the wrong side of it, but turning the heel took three tries for some reason! Usually I’m not that dim-witted about following a pattern, but the first time I miscounted stitches so the heel was off-center. I ripped back. The second time, I got started and lost my place. I ripped back. The third time, I turned everything else off – music, both computers, and phone – and concentrated very hard on getting it right – and here it is.

There’s one thing about this pattern that I don’t understand. After the gusset stitches are picked up, and you start knitting the pattern on the top of the foot, with the decreases, and stockinette stitch on the sole, there’s a comment that says Note: On Rows 17-22 of Chart B, there will be one extra st on Needle 3 (37 sts). What do I do with that extra stitch? Right now, it’s pretty confusing, but maybe it will make more sense when I get up to that point.

The colors are starting to pattern up a little, but that’s all right; I kinda like when it does that. The scallopy lacy stitches hide the color patterning fairly well, but the bottom of the sole will be in stockinette stitch so I think it will show. It will be like a hidden secret color patterning that no one will see unless I show them the bottom of my foot! Pirate-Husband seems quite impressed with this sock. It’s too early to tell, but maybe he’s thinking about how nice it would be to have his own pair of hand-knit socks…

Since my co-workers discovered my knitting habit, they have rarely missed an opportunity to tease me about it.

My project manager asked if I knit the chunky cabled cardigan I often wear to keep me from freezing to death in this ice-cave of an office. When I said no, he wanted to know why not. Why not? Because I bought it from the store for $20. Talk about instant gratification – knitting it myself would mean that I’d still be shivering in my cubicle while a half-knit cardigan languishes in the “finish this soon” pile.

Another co-worker asked about my green scarf and was surprised to hear that I’d knit it myself. I mentioned that I was working on a pair of socks. “Wow,” she gushed, “That’s fantastic! …Hey, how about you knit a pair for me?” Then I took out my current sock-in-progress and showed it to her. “Ohhh, wow, look at those tiny little stitches! How do you do it? It’s so neat and… and tiny! How long does it take you to knit a pair of socks?” She looked horrified when I told her, and waved off her request. “No, no, never mind about knitting me a pair. I had no idea it was so much work!” I could almost hear the unspoken, “Why the heck do you do it?”

The bookkeeper proclaimed that she would never have the patience for knitting. “Knitting gives you patience,” I said, but she didn’t seem to believe me. Most of the rest of them just give me this look of disbelief. “You… knit?” they ask. What do they expect me to do instead?

I think I’ll just leave the knitting at home from now on.

In a recent conversation with the Knitting Ninja on IRC, we were discussing future projects. I mentioned that I wanted to knit a bunch of babypants, but that I was going to hold off on buying the yarn for them until I’d worked through some of my current stash. The Ninja, who apparently knows me too well, pointed out that my stash contains “all that sock yarn!” (Currently eight pairs of socks’ worth, except one of those balls of yarn is going to be fingerless glove-convertible mittens, not socks. That’s not a lot, really. Is it?)

Then I said the following words:

“Sock yarn almost doesn’t count as stash.”

That, right there, is a dangerous dangerous statement. Sock yarn almost doesn’t count because the yarn is always purchased with a purpose. But if sock yarn doesn’t count as stash, then I’m open to buy all kinds of other yarns, aren’t I? So far, I’ve been able to limit myself to just the yarn that fits inside my picnic basket, a perfect container for a yarn stash. It’s lined in a pleasingly plaid fabric. It’s deep enough to hold lots of yarn, but not so deep that I lose any. It has a top section, originally meant to hold cups and silverware, that is great for needles and other notions. And it closes with two brass latches, to keep out any curious and prying paws. I don’t have a cat yet, but one day I will! The most convenient part is that although we do picnic, we never used the basket, because it doesn’t fit on the back of a motorcycle very well, and that’s how our picnics start out. So I’ve never had to empty out my yarn to put food in the basket.

Currently, the basket is holding:

• Four skeins of Noro Kureyon, two each of colorways 147 and 158, for a stripy scarf inspired by the Child’s Rainbow Scarf in Last-Minute Knitted Gifts.
• The aforementioned silk-cashmere coppery-brown laceweight, which I discovered is actually more of a cobweb-weight, for the Lead or Follow lace scarf.
• Two balls of Patricia Roberts’ Lambswool in Charcoal, one of which will be a pair of armwarmers for myself. The other, I don’t know yet.
• Two balls of Rowan Felted Tweed in colorway 148 (purple), for armwarmers of my own design and a Shedir hat from the breast cancer issue of Knitty.
• One ball of Jo Sharp Silk Road DK Tweed, colorway 409 Night, which needs a twin before Pirate-Husband can knit a hat of it. (Yes, this is a contagious hobby. I’m teaching him to knit.)
• 50g each of Lion Brand Moonlight Mohair in colorway 202 and “No Boundaries” in bright green (gifts from a Secret Swap).
• Enough leftover Manos del Uruguay in various colors to make a felted bag.

Then the sock yarn:

• Meilenweit Fun and Stripes 621 will be fingerless gloves with flip-top mittens.
• Another 100g of Plymouth Sockotta, colorway 14, for the Mermaid Gloves to match the Pomatomus socks.
• Regia Canadian Color 4742 will be another pair of Jaywalkers.
• Meilenweit Magico 2530 will be socks.
• Meilenweit Colortweed 1006, more socks.
• Two balls of Trekking XXL in colorways 90 and 66, more socks. Perhaps Monkey.
• One skein of Schaefer Anne in green-purple-and-blue, yet more socks.

And I’m sure I won’t be able to knit through all of that in time for my trip to WEBS in June. The inevitable will happen. My stash will explode. It’s time to think about a second basket.

Pomatomus marches on! Here it is, about halfway through the third pattern repeat. There are only nine rounds to go until I start the heel.

I decided not to make the socks any taller than the pattern calls for, so I’ll have enough of the yarn left over to make matching fingerless gloves. The yarn felt so nice on my arm when I tried it on to take the picture. Warm, but not too scratchy. It may be a little too loose for my skinny little arms, so I’ll have to remember to go down a needle size for the gloves.

It amuses me that I come up with new projects to work on faster than I can finish the ones already on the needles.

Rowan Denim is not as hard on the hands as some other cotton yarns I’ve worked with, even if it does temporarily smurf my fingers. I may have to change my mind about not liking cotton! I’ve also tried Mission Falls 1824 Cotton for a Yoda Sweater, for the first baby of close friends, and Wool in the Woods‘ Helix for a Big Bad Baby Blanket (from the first Stitch ‘n Bitch book), for my second niece on Pirate-Husband’s side of the family.

The blanket took three skeins of the Wool in the Woods – you can see where I switched from one to the next, and I must have knitted the last skein from the other end, because the colors pooled totally differently. The argyle look is spiffy! It would have been neat if the whole blanket pooled up like that. If I remember correctly, I enjoyed the Wool in the Woods yarn more than the Mission Falls 1824. On the other hand, the sweater knit up a lot faster than the blanket! Any future baby blankets will be worked in acrylic and larger needles. Pirate-Husband calls me a fiber snob, because I do tend to prefer wool, but I’ve worked with some acrylic yarn that’s soft and suitable for babies, and it’s conveniently washable. (And inexpensive.) I think I’ll save the more expensive natural fibers for myself!

I find it harder to keep an even stitch tension with cotton, as opposed to wool. Sometimes on the knit rows, the top of the stitch below gets pulled up into my working stitch and I have to tug it back down at the end of the row. This happened a lot more with the Mission Falls and the Wool in the Woods yarn than with the Rowan Denim. Maybe it’s because the first two have an extra thread wrapped around them? In any case, the more I knit with the Denim yarn, the more I like it, and that can’t be bad!

Yarrr, but not in the way that ye think, ye scurvy landlubber!

Last night I finished the first leg of Blu and cast on right away for the second, just in case there’s anything like Second Sock Syndrome for pants legs. The yarn does stain my fingers a little bit, but it washes right off. I’m not sure about my bamboo needles – they may be an interesting shade of blueish-green for a while. Once the pieces are washed for the first time, the extra dye should all go away. I don’t want to have a blue niece, and I’m sure my brother and his wife would prefer if their baby remains baby-colored instead of blue!

At one point in the pattern, you drop a stitch all the way down to the cuff, and then alternate picking up one and two ladders at a time. It ends up looking very much like the outseam on a grownup pair of jeans! Another cool thing is that the yarn will fade, with time, just like grownup jeans. I’m really looking forward to seeing my niece fade these pants into light blue, just like I fade my jeans. These are the 12-18 month size, and I’m sure the crawling will do a number on the knees.

After some trial and tribulation with the postal service losing the package, they finally found and delivered it to me. The latest additions to the library are Folk Bags by Vicki Square, and Richard Rutt’s “A History of Hand Knitting”, which should be helpful if I ever want to do any documentable knitting for the WEBS in June.

I’ve also ordered two FiberTrends patterns, both lace washcloth/soap sack sets. “Bathing Beauties” and “Bathtime Blossoms” will make wonderful Christmas gifts for my mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law, who seem to like such things. It seems like a quick and easy way for me to get into knitting lace – or is that lace knitting?

Once I get the hang of it, I have some beautiful coppery-brown silk and cashmere laceweight yarn that will one day be a beautiful coppery-brown silk and cashmere lace scarf. I’m almost scared to touch it; it’s so beautiful in the ball. I admit, sometimes I take it out of the yarn basket just to pet and admire it for a minute or two.

Pirate-Husband says that if I really want to knit lace, I can knit cuffs for all his SCA shirts. When I pointed out that knitted lace isn’t documentable for his time period (mid-1500s), he counter-pointed out that neither is the machine-produced stuff he has sewn to his shirts now. I looked briefly at bobbin lace, which *is* documentable to the mid-1500s, but decided that there was too much fine thread there for me to enjoy playing with it as much as I enjoy knitting with yarn. So he’s going to get knitted lace, if he gets any lace at all. I’m sure he won’t complain.

Though I’ve knit two pair of simple toe-up, short-row heel, ribbed-leg socks, I decided it was time for something a little more complicated for my third pair – Grumperina’s Jaywalker, from the September 2005 issue of Magknits. The Cherry Tree Hill Supersock (colorway ‘Java’) came from a Socktober sale at Red Bird Knits, and it was time to get it out of the stash! I got a double discount on that order – once for the sale, and the other from the exchange rate. Buying yarn from Canadian websites has some perks!

Here’s one from the back. When I first started knitting socks, I was all about the short-row heel, especially for striped socks. Now I see what the flap heel is all about, and how well it fits. Picking up stitches for the gusset isn’t as difficult as I’d thought it might be. I do like toe-up socks because it’s harder to run out of yarn before you’re done with your sock. Towards the end of Jaywalker Two, I was panicking that I wouldn’t have enough yarn to finish the toe! I started knitting faster, as if that would get me to the grafting before the yarn ran out. It must have worked, because I finished the second sock with just twelve yards of yarn left over.

I just love how the yarn striped across the tops of my feet and that the colors are aligned from one sock to the next. That wasn’t planned, honest! My next socks (after Pomatomus) will be another pair of Jaywalkers in a self-striping yarn which will show off the pattern better… and which have more yardage to the ball than the CTH, so I can avoid the fear of a toe-less second sock! I really love the pattern, and could see myself making quite a few pair.

I found a local Stitch ‘n Bitch through Meetup, and tonight I went for the second time. It’s a relatively new group, but it has a lot of potential. We had about a dozen people there, both two weeks ago and tonight. Ages ranged from high school to grandmother, and the skill range was from total beginner to wow, look at that lace! I’m excited to be able to knit with other people once in a while, instead of sitting at my computer and occasionally typing to a friend with one finger while holding the ends of DPNs in my mouth.

[friend] hey, what’s goin’ on tonight?
[me] am knitting. cant type. bbl.

Either the conversation goes slowly, or the knitting does.

The So-Called Scarf is now five or six inches longer. I’m at the end of the second ball of yarn, which means I’m two-thirds done… and now, of course, the scarf is totally out of season. I’m working with Manos del Uruguay in a dark green, which I bought in cold, snowy Ottawa in cold, snowy February. Although we are supposed to get snow showers here on Friday night, I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to finish the scarf in time for Saturday. I will just have to keep working on it and have it ready for next winter.

Pomatomus is progressing, slowly but surely. I’m almost done with the second pattern repeat. These are the most complicated socks I’ve ever done, and I’m loving how they are coming out! The Plymouth Sockotta (color 14) is not as bad to work with as I had thought. I’m not generally fond of cotton, but this does have a part wool content… and they are going to be summer socks. I can’t decide if I’m going to make them taller than the pattern calls for. I do have twice as much yarn as necessary, so I could theoretically make them pretty tall socks. They’re stretchy enough that I wouldn’t need calf shaping, I don’t think. Here’s a more artsy shot which shows how awesome the yarn is. I think the color is just perfect for the pattern, and I love the white mixed with the color. It hasn’t pooled at all yet, but I’m wondering if I won’t get a little on the foot. Time will tell!

The third WIP on the needles is Blu, from the Winter 2005 issue of Knitty. I’m into the seat shaping of the first leg, and haven’t got any pictures yet. I picked up some Sugar ‘n Cream in a horrific orange color for the seams, but I’m a whole leg away from that point. The baby – my niece! – is not due for another six weeks, so I have some time left.