The Knitting Pirate

Pirate-Husband finally agrees that the legs of his socks are long enough. I held one up to his actual leg last night and pointed out that its top matched exactly with where the sock he’d been wearing left a line just under his calf muscle. Tonight, the heel flap (and I’m not sure it’s a coincidence that I mis-typed “hell flap” first). It’s an 80-stitch sock, so I’m planning a 40-row, 40-stitch flap, based on the fact that my last sock was 72 stitches and I did a 36-row, 36-stitch flap which came out just right.

Cookie A. will be teaching a sock design workshop in September at Nature’s Yarns in Fairfax, and I got the last spot on the sign-up sheet! I’m so excited. It’s a 6-8 hour class, and includes lunch. I’d already been pondering some ideas for designs, but I’m sure this class will give me the kickstart I need to put my ideas together into an actual sock!

I want to knit now.

Staycation, n. – A vacation that is spent at one’s home enjoying all that home and one’s home environs have to offer.

Knitting was put on hold for a week while out-of-town friends came to visit. We spent two days visiting local wineries and three working on the rebuilding of our koi pond. It’s going to look so good when it’s done! Overall it was a wonderful time, even if it was mostly yarn-free. (One of the wineries was selling alpaca yarns. I didn’t buy any.) I got to show off the new drum carder and spun up half a bobbin of some pepto-pink practice wool to demonstrate the wheel. One friend even commented that the BFL I spun up looks “store-bought”!

I did get a little more done on the first of Pirate-Husband’s socks and I’m almost up to the heel flap (he keeps saying I should make the leg a little longer) and I’m already thinking about what the next socks will be! Too many projects, not enough time.

Besides, I have all these non-yarn hobbies. I got a mountain bike and I need to start riding, I miss playing guitar, and I haven’t drawn anything in a long time. There’s a computer to rebuild and I’d like to start work on a story that’s been brewing in my head for a while. The house is a constant project. Lest anyone think I’m complaining, I’m not! I love my life. It’s everything I’ve been wanting forever. Good job, good house, good husband, good friends, good hobbies. I just wish I could do everything at once!

I decided to try out this Blue-Faced Leicester from Cloverleaf Farm today. In an effort to keep the color transitions, I split the roving into quarters and then pre-drafted, spun singles, and plied. I only got half done – about 60 yards worth – and I’ll spin the other half later or tomorrow.

Some of the color changes match up well. I got some barber-poling in other spots, but not too bad. All the colors go with each other well, at least! Mostly it looks orange and yellow. The greens were kinda lost. I have ideas for how to split roving in the future and not lose any colors. It will be fun to experiment with that!

I’m not sure if I overplied or if the twist was so fresh that the skein wanted to just spring back on itself, but I gave it a soak and a whack, and now it’s drying in the tub. It’s very bright, and I’m not sure what I’ll make yet. I know someone who really likes orange and who really appreciates handknits; perhaps I’ll make her a hat.

Thanks to Emm1e, here are my completed Garter Rib Socks! I knit the first one in five weeks; the second one took longer because I got caught up in moving, cleaning, unpacking, and all those other things that go along with buying a house. They were a quick knit, and a decent pattern. Some of the instructions, like the part for centering the pattern over the instep, could have been written a little more clearly. I think I put one too many rows (two, really) into the heel flap as well, but the socks seem to fit all right when I tried them on. I’ll have to see how they are when I wear them for a whole day instead of a whole five minutes.

I’m looking forward to showing these off at work tomorrow! Some of my co-workers have been following the saga of the socks. One of them even gave a little “woohoo!” when I said that I’d found a source for the little bit of extra that I needed!

I found out that another of my co-workers knits and suggested that we should set up a lunchtime group to sit, knit, relax, and teach anyone else who wants to learn. She smiled and nodded. I get the feeling that she’s not quite as into this yarn thing as I am…

This is the beginning of Pirate-Husband’s Plain Sock. It’s made with Regia 4-ply in colorway 1039, a manly brown-brown-black. I did 20 rows of ribbing (an inch and a half) and now it’s a long stockinette journey to the heel.

I shouldn’t be working on these at home; they should be my traveling sock. I should be working on the Pomatomuseses or the Ostrich Plumes scarf. But I’m tired, and they’re easy, and I want to give Pirate-Husband his socks sooner rather than later. My feet can wait for Pomatomii and that scarf may be done before I’m 40, but at this rate I’m not sure!

Someone else offered to wind off some Pirate’s Booty for me. Knitters are the nicest people! I let her know that I’d already spoken to someone and expected the yarn next week, and thanked her profusely. I can’t wait for those socks to be done. It’s like they’re taunting me with their unfinishedness – just a few rounds to go, and they sit on my desk glaring at me for abandoning them. It’s not their fault. They don’t know that I’m waiting for their toe-yarn to arrive.

Firstly, an awesome person from Ravelry was able to help me out with the Pirate Booty yarn. She has a whole skein but small feet, so she asked me to estimate what I needed and she’ll mail it to me. How great is that? I did the math and came out with ten or twelve rows remaining, so I told her that I guessed 12 feet would be enough. I hope that’s enough. I’m nervous now that it’s not, but I didn’t want to ask for more than I needed! Anyway, I expect that to come in the mail sometime next week, and then I can get this sock done.

Also, I am getting started on Pirate-Husband’s Plain Socks. I’m using Regia 4-ply in a marled brown/brown/black colorway, and just doing plain top-down socks with a flap heel and gusset. I measured his feet yesterday and took a gauge swatch off some other Regia socks I made. 9 stitches to the inch, times 10 inches around his feet, minus 10% for ease, gives me 80 stitches (okay, 81, but 80 is a nice round number). These should go pretty fast! I’ll take pictures when there’s something to show.

Ta-daaah! My very first finished handspun yarn! This came from Romney roving that I bought last year at MD Sheep and Wool with Janis, and I finally got around to spinning and plying it. It’s a bit uneven in parts, but I’m sure I’ll improve with practice (it would probably help to have a better light source, too). Still, I’m excited! I’m going to try a three-ply with what’s left on the bobbins.

There are also three toilet paper roll bobbins of singles that were spun up on the drop spindle. I’m going to ply those on the wheel as well, and remember that I spun the singles in the opposite direction, so I need to ply them the other way from the first batch.

I have no idea what I’m going to make with this stuff. I have 66 yards of it. Any suggestions?

Curses! Darn, rats, phooey and grr! I have run out of yarn halfway through the toe of the second Garter Rib Sock. There are ten rounds to go and only ten inches of yarn left. Blue Moon doesn’t sell emergency mini-skeins, so I’ve gone to the “Socks that Rawk” group on Ravelry and asked them for help.

If anyone has leftovers of STR Lightweight in “Pirate Booty,” I’m willing to buy, beg or barter. And if not, then I’ll have to resign myself to having a mis-matched sock toe.

I knew the yardage of this yarn was on the light side, so I made the sock leg shorter than I normally do. Guess the garter rib pattern ate a lot of the yarn. Next time I use lightweight I will make the leg even shorter and pick a different stitch pattern… and after that I might just order mediumweight yarn, which goes further. Or I’ll stick to the yarns with more yardage.

The Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival signified the break in my yarn and fiber diet. I drove up by myself, wandered around for a bit, and bought this rainbow skein of Trekking XXL before meeting up with Veronica. We goaded each other into buying stuff. After she left, I met up with friends Angie and Joel, and Joel’s parents. We shopped the rest of the festival together and I bought some more yarn. I also picked up a handmade broom of real straw. A log house needs a real broom!

First I bought this roving, and I was so excited that I forgot to note what booth I got it from. Drat! It’s grayish green with purple and blue. The colors are so subtle that the camera ate them. I hope that they’re not so subtle that they get lost when I spin it up. There was some matching purple roving that I decided not to buy, but my original thought was that I could ply them together for a barberpole effect. Then I thought that might be a bit ugly, and it was still early in the day, so I didn’t buy the purple.

…the next thing I remember is picking up this eight ounces of merino roving from Yarn Barn of KS in the “sandalwood” colorway. I think it would make awesome tall socks to go with blue jeans, though with eight ounces of it I could even think of a larger size project!

“Cranberry Bog” merino and “Autumn” BFL, four ounces of each from Cloverleaf Farms. At this point in the shopping, I had the idea that I was going to try to sell some of this handspun on Etsy and perhaps recoup some of my expenditures. I know people do it, but I have no idea how successful they are at it, if at all.

Although I was trying to keep from buying too much of the same color families, I didn’t realize how similar the color of this merino from C*EYE*BER Fiber was to the BFL above. Ah well, it’s a whole different fiber, right?

While this one is superwash, I think for the sake of not felting *any* socks I’m going to start handwashing all of them, even the ones which can be machine-washed. Pirate-Husband suggested that I put a little basket by our regular hamper for the handwash items, and I think that’s a fantastic idea. I’d be so mad if I felted a sock that I’d spun and knit! (And I’d probably be even more mad if Pirate-Husband did it, though I’m not worried. He’s better with the laundry than I am.)

This stuff is bright, bright, bright green. Pirate-Husband suggests that I should design a scaly sort of sock with it, something lizardy or dragonesque. It’s from Ellen’s Half-Pint Farm and is a full 500 yards – how great is that? I did say I wanted solid or semi-solid sock yarns, but I wasn’t expecting to get something quite so bright. Gotta switch things up every once in a while!

The last purchases of the day were these three skeins of sock yarn from Tess’ Designer Yarns. I plan to use the silvery-gray ones for Clessidra socks, but I have no plan for the amber color yet. Each skein is 450 yards, plenty for my oversize feet.

But the biggest, baddest, best purchase of the day… I bought a Strauch Finest drum carder. I’m sure you all know by now that I’ve been wanting one. With Pirate-Husband’s goading, I was able to buckle down and spend the money. He helped me set it up when I got home and we ran some practice batts. It is freaking awesome. I can’t express how amazing this tool is, and how much pain it will save my wrists now that I don’t have to hand-card eight pounds of alpaca fleece. I did take out the fleece to card, but it had a little too much vegetable matter in it. I’ll have to pick that out before carding, I think.

All in all, Sheep and Wool was a great time! I skipped the Ravelry meetup but I did meet several other Ravelers. And, aside from the drum carder, I even managed to stay within my yarn and fiber budget! Now, of course, I’m back on the ‘diet’ until I use some of this stuff up.