The Knitting Pirate

It gets dark so early now that if I get the least bit distracted when I get home from work, I can’t take good pictures of my new yarn or my sock progress. But I can tell you that there is new yarn and sock progress!

I have five out of six balls of Rowan Felted Tweed; the sixth is on backorder. I have new blue Trekking XXL and some heathery (or is it marled, I don’t know) Regia for Pirate-Husband’s socks.

I don’t have pictures of Pirate-Mom and me winding up her beautiful alpaca laceweight, because I totally forgot to bring my camera to Thanksgiving with me, but she is impressed by the efficiency of the swift and ballwinder combination, even if one ball came out a lot tighter than the other. I told her to knit with that one first.

I have ideas for new sock patterns which I need to draw or chart up, and send to the yarn-dyer, so that she can yea or nay them and send me enough yarn to knit up a swatch.

And I have good news about the house – the other offer fell through, so we are re-submitting ours at the same price! I don’t know what went wrong with theirs, but I’m hoping this time ours will be accepted. Wouldn’t that be cool?

Thanksgiving weekend was great! Pirate-Husband and I drove up to Queens on Thursday morning and had almost no traffic. It was amazing. Even the toll plaza at the NJ Turnpike exit for the Goethals Bridge was free and clear. I’ve never seen it so empty. The holiday was wonderful. I ate way too much food and got quite a bit of knitting time in while hanging out with family. The Trekking Ribbed Sock got plenty of ooohs and ahhhs. I’m still several inches from the toe, but happy with my progress. (Pictures later, if there’s enough sunlight for it.)

The news about the house isn’t so great. Apparently someone else came in after us and offered more money, so we’re back to hunting. I’m disappointed, but not heartbroken. That’s just the way these things go, though it would have been nice if the seller’s agent had given us the chance to match the offer. We went looking at other neighborhoods on Sunday and weren’t impressed with them. Back to the ol’ drawing board!

Pirate-Husband wrote, “You do not condone photocopying of patterns, yet you do not have the same issues sharing music… I have to ask why is one ok but not the other?” Technically and legally speaking, neither is okay. Pirate-Husband is right; I have a pretty good collection of mp3s, and I haven’t had any ethical or moral qualms about it. I’m not at all sure why not. They should be the same, yeah? Disregarding that “it’s the law, there’s no rational explanation,” I don’t understand why it’s okay to borrow a pattern book from a friend, but not make a copy of the pattern. It’s okay to make a copy for your own personal use if you bought the pattern in the first place, and it’s okay to make a copy from a library book as long as you destroy the copy when you’re done with it, but it’s not okay to make a copy and keep it.

Football on television, sock in my hands and laptop at my side, sitting on the couch with Pirate-Husband, who’s playing a computer game. Life is good.

Ravelry is sucking away my knitting time. As if I weren’t addicted to the internet enough already, there are two things which are making it worse. First, the Big Issues Debate Group. The people there are just awesome! There’s such a high level of intelligence and civility, even when we disagree 100% on a topic. Now the second, just started today, is that there’s a #ravelry channel on IRC. I’m done for.

But I’m way past the heel and gusset on the Trekking Sock (stitches all fixed now) and I did a few rounds on the Pomatomus yesterday. I’m not doing *nothing*, really! Just not making the kind of progress I want.

There is a Kureyon Sock Yarn coming out. It’s not even too expensive! $19 for 462 yards/100g, and the yardage looks good. I plan to buy a skein once I decide on a colorway, but I hope it’s not as full of twigs and crap as the original Kureyon.

The great thing about having SnB at Cosi is that they serve wine. I had a glass of a pretty good Shiraz with my sock knitting last night. Now, I’m not sure if it was the wine or if it was the talking and not paying attention to my knitting, but I came around to the ribbed portion of my sock and noticed that I’d knit right across two purl stitches on the round before. It was getting towards the end of the evening, so I put the whole thing away. I’ve learned that I can’t fix stitches at SnB, but I can do it just fine at home the next day when I stop being angry at them for being backwards.

We did have a bit of a sour note to the SnB, unfortunately. The subject of photocopying patterns came up. Not just borrowing a book from the library and making a copy for yourself, but making lots of copies for friends from a pattern you bought. Some people believed that it was okay to make a copy of a friend’s pattern, because there’s nothing wrong with borrowing the friend’s book. Some people said that they would copy a friend’s pattern, but not a friend’s CD. Where is the line drawn? Anyway, there was a big disagreement and eventually (I hope) it was settled that there was an official condemnation of the practice, but obviously whatever people do on their own time away from the SnB is their own business, legal or not.

I’m in the process of working out a deal with an indie yarn-dyer, in which she would provide me with sock yarn and I would design patterns which she would sell on her website and give me 50% of the profits from the sales. I’d retain copyright and could sell the patterns on my own as well. Sounds good to me! Now I just have to come up with some design ideas.

There are two pieces of news on the home front. One is that our offer has been submitted but no one has gotten back to us either way, and we got a pretty darned good rate on a mortgage app. We knew the process would take a while, so we’re just being patient. The other piece of news is that my grandma (Dad’s mom) is having abdominal surgery tomorrow to repair a previous hernia operation’s failure. They expect her to come through just fine, so I’m not very worried, but it’s on my mind.

I hate to end an entry on a downer, so I will say this: THANKSGIVING. I love Thanksgiving. It is my favorite holiday of all time. I can’t wait to see (most of) my family, catch up with everyone, throw a football around in the street, drink beer with my cousins and scotch with my uncles, eat food until I explode, and fall asleep surrounded by people I love. Of course I will be bringing the sock along with me. It’s funny, when I was a kid I always brought a stuffed animal on trips. Now I bring socks. There’s little difference, really!

P.S. Wow, 35 people have queued up my armwarmers!

I love my SnB, I really do. But I never get very much knitting done there, especially when I’m working on a sock. There’s so much laughter and talking and looking at other people’s projects, it leaves no time to work on my own! I should cast on a worsted-weight baby hat for next week, and I might get somewhere with it. On the other hand, there is so much knowledge there, and everyone’s willing to share. The first meetup of every month includes a Show-and-Tell; last night’s theme was favorite yarns.

I brought the silk and cashmere blend and we determined that it’s actually gossamer weight, not cobweb. Addi Lace circulars only go down to size 1, but I’m wondering if that will work for this. It might be too large – and yes, it feels very strange to say that size 1 needles might be too large! I also brought a two pound hank of brown cotton yarn. Everyone agreed that it’s got a great feel, and it’s very good yarn, but no one came up with any ideas as to what to do with the stuff. The only suggestion I like was to bring it to a dyeing evening, try to lighten it with bleach or something, and then redye it a better color. But still, what does one do with two pounds of fine, dark brown cotton?

Once I got the ruler out and measured, there was no denying that the leg of the Trekking Ribbed Sock was just not as long as I really wanted it to be. It was barely six inches long, and I’m aiming for at least six and a half, or maybe even seven inches. Some not-so-serious knitting got me closer to six, and maybe tonight at SnB I’ll make more serious progress. Then I just have to figure out the heel. I know the flap is knit on half the stitches until it’s square, which isn’t so difficult as long as I remember to count rows, but how do I know how many stitches to put into the turning of the heel? Research is necessary. It shouldn’t be too hard to find another 64-stitch sock pattern with the right sort of heel and steal borrow the numbers.

In non-knitting news, Pirate-Husband and I are just about convinced that we’re going to make an offer on that house, pending inspection. He wants to go back there one more time to take some measurements and make estimates of how much it will cost us to do each repair/renovating project. I want to plan out where my spinning wheel will go! (Probably in the family room just off the kitchen. I can imagine spending a lot of time in there, once it’s no longer full of misplaced walls.) It’s very exciting but also very scary, and I’m trying not to retreat into complicated knitting just to take my mind off the more serious business of house-buying. But oh, when it’s done, what a lovely house it will be!

I’m having a hard time believing this myself, but I didn’t knit a single stitch yesterday! I meant to, but somehow it just never happened. I came home from work and got dinner going, then found myself snoozing on the futon instead of knitting. Then Pirate-Husband and I watched the second half of Gone With the Wind. Seems like there should be a third half that tells the rest of the story!

Speaking of Pirate-Husband, he is very wise in the ways of knitters. He did not bring any yarn or wool back from Iceland with him for me, because (as he said) there’d be no way of knowing how much I needed for a project. Instead, he brought me a handknit hat in variegated greens! It is great and will match my scarf! I think it’s knit of Lopi (what else?) and I’m hoping it’s not too itchy to wear. I have a Jayne Hat made of Lopi from the Knitting Ninja, which I can only wear for a little while before the itches go straight through my head. Perhaps I can line each of the hats with soft fleece or something.

Tonight I will definitely knit *something*, though I’m not sure what project I’ll work on. Tomorrow is SnB again! We decided that it was silly to say that we were an every-other-week group when we keep showing up every Wednesday, so now we’re officially a weekly group.

How long does it usually take for WEBS to fill and ship an order? Not that I can start the projects yet, but I’m anxious to have the yarn.

I was reminded recently that I’d promised to knit a bag for my friend Riya, who made me the most gorgeous dress I’ve ever owned. It’s gold velvet and brocade, and I need the help of two people to get dressed, and it requires a hoop-skirt underneath it to look right. I wore it last Pennsic to the Hoity-Toity Party at Casa Bardicci, and I have never had so much fun at that party because always before I felt under-dressed. Anyway, I said to myself that I would knit a bag for Riya. I even told her that I was going to do it, because that way I’d be held to my statement. I picked out the bag (shh, it’s a secret as to which one), bought the pattern, and tried to find the yarn at one of the LYSs here. No luck!

Well, Friday night I talked to Riya on the phone and that reminded me of this bag, and I said to myself, “Self, you’re going to have to order the yarn online or you’re never going to get it,” so I went to WEBS and ordered it. I was a few cents short of the cutoff for the 20% discount, so I ordered some sock yarn with Pirate-Husband in mind, which saved me almost $14, or just the price of a ball of Trekking XXL… I consider this to be a free ball of Trekking, and let no one say that I could have saved $14, because I already know.

Today I spent some time with Pirate-Mom, who was putting the finishing touches on a lace-ish cardigan for her granddaughter/my nieceling. “You really oughta knit something for yourself some time,” I said, and she agreed – she wants to knit a lace stole to wear at fancy events. She’s always getting dressed up and going somewhere. So she inspected my Ostrich Plumes Scarf, and decided she really liked that stitch pattern. We checked out some yarn online and she ended up ordering three hanks of Alpaca Cloud in “Smoke Heather” from KnitPicks. It’s inexpensive enough, she says, that if she doesn’t like it, she won’t feel bad (and she’s sure I would volunteer to buy it from her).

I have finished the first pattern repeat of the second Pomatomus sock, and it is starting to look like something other than a mess. How pleasant! Tonight I’m going to see if I can get past the heel of the Trekking Ribbed Sock so that I can once again bring it out in public.

During knitting breaks I’ve been spinning some; the spindle is almost full and ready to be wound off onto the next toilet paper roll. Pirate-Husband thinks it’s funny that I’ve been collecting them! I’m quite happy with the progression of my spinning skills. I’ve gone from park-and-draft, to letting the spindle drop, to being tempted to stand on my chair to get more out of each spin. And the single gets more even with each session.