The Knitting Pirate

2009 was a slow knitting year for me; I only completed three projects. (Of course, if I’d been able to keep to one sock at a time, I’d probably have three more pairs to show…)

Pomatomus are the most complex socks I’ve ever knitted. Although they’re rated as difficult, I found that the stitch pattern made a lot of sense and was actually quite easy to follow once I got the hang of it. On the other hand, they’re definitely not a mindless sock that I’d feel comfortable knitting on without the pattern in front of me, checking off rounds as I finish them. I love them, but unlike some other patterns (*cough*Jaywalker*cough*) I’m not tempted to knit another pair. Pomatomus were my introduction to Cookie A.’s designs; this free pattern came from the Winter 2005 Knitty.

I wear my Fleep-Tops more than any other piece of knitting I’ve finished, I think. They are amazingly warm and incredibly comfortable, and not quite like anything I’ve ever seen in a store. I used a combination of Knitty’s Cigar pattern and Sarkasmo’s Gnomittens, with added miniature fleep-top thumb caps. They were a good quick project, finished in only a month. It’s unfortunate that the yarn is discontinued; I would love to make a backup pair, or perhaps some as gifts for people I especially like. Perhaps some medium- or heavyweight Socks that Rock from Blue Moon Fiber Arts would be a good substitution.

The thoroughly misnamed Quick Toe Up Socks weren’t quick at all, not after I found a knot in the first skein of yarn and had to do some serious futzing to make the stripes line up from one sock to the other. I used Wendy Johnson’s Generic Toe-Up Sock Pattern, substituting a figure-eight toe, and made the sock 64 stitches around. It pleases me that they match so perfectly, even if I had to be ridiculously perfectionist about getting them that way! I like when my striped socks match up, especially wide stripes.

While it wasn’t knitting, I did do an overhaul of this site in 2009 to change the look and feel, and I added a Twitter account. I bought a new spinning wheel, a Kromski Sonata in walnut, on which I spun several skeins of yarn, including this BFL two-ply which is rapidly becoming my first pair of handspun socks. I’m considering selling the Ashford Traditional; while I love the way it looks, it doesn’t fit me quite right and I don’t spin on it. Perhaps I’ll give it one last try before I make a decision. Pirate-Husband says that it matches the house, and if I want to keep it around as a decoration, he’d be fine with that… but I think it’s sad to have a working wheel that isn’t ever used.

Also in 2009: I read 26 books, which took up some knitting time, and I finally learned to drive a car with a manual transmission so that I could trade in my old beat-up Cutlass for a new shiny Mazda3.

I am excited about 2010! I have plans to finish up the projects on my needles and start some new ones, to publish a design or two, and to improve my spinning skills. My parents bought a KitchenAid stand mixer for Pirate-Husband and me for our combined birthday and Chanukah gifts, so there will be fresh bread to go along with the yarn. Things just keep getting better and better!

The socks which fit perfectly, fresh off the needles, are now too big. The socks which I thought were too small, fit perfectly after a few wearings. There’s a lesson to be learned here, one which is brought to mind when I try on my handspun socks: “These socks are not really too small.” Sure, they’re difficult to get on and off – but a few wearings and washings will soften them up. And they fit just right around my ankles, no bagging or wrinkling at all.

This is what I have learned about socks this year:

• With standard sock yarn, I should make a 64-stitch stockinette-footed sock for myself.
• I might consider 68 stitches if I want ribbing down the foot.
• The socks aren’t too small. Really. Unless they are, in which case
• It’s so easy to rip back and fix mistakes.
• If I make the sock leg six inches long, there should be enough yarn left over for the foot.
• Heel-flap-and-gusset socks fit better than short row heel socks.
• Short row heel socks are acceptable, though.
• I need to learn to do a heel flap and gusset sock from the toe up.
• Here is a conveniently free pattern from Wendy for just that.
• I like to knit socks for the people I love best.
• Handknit socks are so much better than store-bought, but toe socks from Sock Dreams are a close second.

In the coming year I’d like to try new sock architectures – the Hat-Heel Sock looks interesting, and I have Cat Bordhi’s New Pathways for Sock Knitters book to work through as well. I have a half-ton of sock yarn and I’m not letting myself buy any more until I’ve used some up!

These socks are cranking right along, and I am absolutely loving the yarn. Fortunately I have another skein in a different colorway for myself! As I expected, there was a little pooling around the gusset, but for the most part the colors are distributing evenly. It is much more vivid in direct sunlight, which is a neat trick of the dye job. Indoors, the colors are quite subtle. (You can ignore the safety pin; that was just a place-marker.)

I have been thinking of the handspun socks as the “Perfectly Imperfect Socks.” There is something incredible about knitting with yarn that I spun myself – about being able to spin yarn that’s good enough to knit with – about watching the colors come together and knowing that there will never be another pair of socks like these. They’re mine, from beginning to end, and I am wonderfully proud of them. And of myself.

This is the first of the Stripey Striped Socks. I don’t think I’ve had a love-hate relationship with a yarn like this before. The only thing that might come close is the Plymouth Sockotta that I used for Pomatomus. The colors are just perfect, but knitting with the yarn… not so much.

I hate to admit it, but I’d kinda like a second pair of these. I’ve seen some gorgeous knee-high versions that alternate white with the colors. What can I say, I’m a sucker for the stripes!

The Sibling Sock is stripey in a whole different way. Trekking XXL is a beautiful thin yarn which comes together in completely random stripes. This is a skein which Janis gave me as a gift a few years ago. The leg is a little short because I was paranoid of running out of yarn, but that’s all right; I’m sure the leftovers will be put to use somewhere. When the sock is done, I plan to write up the pattern for it in two sizes, and then publish it.

One of my goals for 2010 is to finish all the socks I have on the needles. Another is to publish at least two patterns. I have the first one nearly done and ready to go… but I don’t yet know what the second one will be.

Last night I finished the gusset decreases on the first of the Cascade Heritage socks. It looks as if I’m getting nine stitches to the inch, which is slightly more than I’d expected from my first swatchattempt at knitting the cuff. I hope the socks are big enough for Michael, because they’re slightly too big for me. And I hope I don’t run out of yarn before I get to the toe. It’s going to be close.

When I picked up the gusset stitches, I picked up an extra two in each corner to eliminate the hole that so often forms there. But they were picked up into purl stitches, so I needed to figure out the purl equivalents for decreases. The opposite of K2tog is P2tog, but the opposite of SSK… is SSP, a complicated maneuver which begins in a similar way (slip two stitches knitwise, return them to the left needle) but then requires those two stitches to be purled together through the back loop. Fortunately there is only one of these stitches to be made per sock; I think I can deal with that.

Perhaps in a couple of years I’ll look back on this entry and laugh that I ever thought SSP was complicated.

Fortunately, only three stitches had slid from the needles of the handspun sock, and hadn’t dropped down very far at all. I was able to rescue them in just a few minutes (doesn’t everyone keep a small crochet hook in their purse?) and resumed knitting with no progress lost. The yarn seems to be slightly thinner in this section and I’m hoping it’s not too thin for the sock.

The truth is, I think I will love these more if they are slightly imperfect. As a perfectionist, I’ve always been a hoarder of arts and craft supplies, and now of yarn – because as long as it’s still unused, it has great potential. If I use it up, it might not come out as well as I imagine it in my head. These socks are an attempt to conquer that terrible attitude. I was hesitant to spin the fiber into yarn because I didn’t want to mess it up, and then I was delaying knitting the yarn into socks because I didn’t want to mess it up. But I have one sock done and another on the way, and they’re coming out all right if not perfectly… and they are mine, my very first handspun socks, and no matter what they’re like when they’re done I will adore them.

Every time I put my sock in progress into my purse, I think “I sure hope none of the stitches slide off the needles.” They almost never do… but when I took the toe of my handspun sock out of my bag, I noticed a suspiciously ramen-like section of yarn. Yep, sure enough. some of the stitches had slid free and dropped down a few rows. Phooey!

In lieu of fixing it, I worked on the Cascade Heritage sock. I’m done with the leg and about to start the heel flap, but I’ve run into math troubles. I’d thought to continue the k3, p1 ribbing down the heel, but this is a 68 stitch sock – so there are seventeen groups of four stitches – so how many of them would I use to make a symmetrical heel flap? If I want to frame the instep with purl stitches, that would mean doing the ribbed heel flap over 35 stitches rather than 34. And then what are the heel turn numbers?

The internet has the solution: apparently 70 stitch socks, with 35 stitch heel flaps, are not uncommon! I checked a few different patterns and picked the numbers which looked best to me. Here’s hoping it works out well. If it doesn’t, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve un-knit a heel flap!

By 15:00 today, we had five inches of heavy, wet snow. It is so sticky that it is clinging to the sides of the trees! Unfortunately, the snow meant I had to cancel my plans to go out today. Fortunately, my house is well-stocked with food and yarn! And what better way to spend a snowed-in day than with food and yarn? To those ends, we had fried eggs and toast for breakfast, I now have bread rising in the oven, and there are socks in progress all around.

First off, I decided that I was going to finish the first of the Stripy Striped Socks, already. I knit the last few stripes of ribbing and then started the sewn bind-off. This is the bind-off that I always use for toe-up socks. It’s quite stretchy if you sew loosely, and makes a neat edge. About halfway through the bind-off, I ran into the same issue that other people have had with Kureyon Sock – I came to an underspun section of yarn, and it started to drift apart. At this point I may have said some unprintable words, so we’ll just skip ahead to me overtwisting the yarn, finishing the bind-off, and crossing my fingers that it won’t disintegrate when it’s washed for the first time, ’cause that would really suck.

After I’d sewn in the ends, and sworn that I will never again purchase this yarn no matter how pretty the colors may be, I went downstairs and showed the sock to Pirate-Husband. “Nice!” he exclaimed. “How does it fit?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m angry at it. I haven’t tried it on yet.”

“How could you knit a sock and not even try it on?” he asked, incredulous. So I did. And it fit perfectly. Hooray!

Tonight I am not going to cast on the second Stripy Striped Sock; instead I am going to work with Cascade Heritage, a much more polite and well-behaved example of what sock yarn really ought to be.

I don’t know about other knitters, but I really don’t think about row gauge too often. Stitch gauge, absolutely, but row gauge, not so much. This is probably because I knit things based on length, not number of rows. A scarf? I just knit until it’s as long as I want it to be, and then block it even longer. Socks? I knit the leg as long as I think I can get away with, then the foot to as long as my foot is. If I were knitting a sweater, row gauge would be important to make sure that the shaping landed in the right place. Or, if my tension changed from one sleeve to another, the sleeves would end up different lengths.

I must have been a little more relaxed when I knit the first half of the project (about which I cannot yet write), because the second half is coming out significantly shorter. Last night I gave it a few good tugs and pulls, and I think I can block it out to be the same as the first half. I’ll have to knit with more calmness of mind when I go back to to it tonight.

It’s really important to me that this project comes out well, and I think my hurriedness is not helping. The other night, I kept knitting when I meant to purl, and purling when I meant to knit. Yesterday I had to drop a stitch down six or seven rows to change a purl to a knit. How hard is ribbing, that I can’t keep it straight?