The Knitting Pirate

I bought this merino-silk blend from Cloverleaf Farms at Maryland Sheep and Wool in 2009. A few months later, I brought it with me on vacation to spin, and according to my notes I finished the singles in September and “set aside for plying some other time,” probably because I had been very frustrated with spinning the singles. The fiber stuck to itself and didn’t draft as smoothly as I wanted. About a month ago, I plied a bobbin full, and was left with quite a lot of singles. Those sat on the bobbin and looked lonely until this past weekend, when I got annoyed at my procrastination and finally finished it off.

There was too much to wrap around my hand and Andean ply, so I used my ball winder to make a center-pull ball and plied from either end of it. It got messy towards the end and I lost a few yards of singles to tangles, but I had it going smoothly for a while. Anyway, now I have a lovely two-ply fingering weight yarn in glimmering greens and browns. Next weekend I will wash all the plied yarns and then they will be ready to knit!

Observant readers will notice a guitar pick in the background of the second picture, but what the picture doesn’t quite show is the toothmarks all over the tip of it! At 2mm, it is way too thick for me to use as a pick, but it is perfect to chew on while I spin. Like Charlie Brown, I have a habit of sticking out my tongue, or sometimes my lower jaw, when I’m concentrating on something. But I also have TMJ problems, which are exacerbated by this habit. The dentist offered me a $500 bite guard, but chewing on a guitar pick does the trick just as well for a lot less money. It keeps me from clenching my teeth or holding my jaw in an awkward position, and so I have tooth-marked guitar picks. I even keep one in my office. The funny thing is, I almost never play my guitar with a pick!

And, a zissen Pesach to all who are celebrating! While I am not very observant, the words of the Seder have always struck a chord in my heart. “…from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, from mourning to festivity,from darkness to great light.” May we all be freed from the things to which we are unhappy slaves, whether we give the credit for our freedom to ourselves or to something outside ourselves. Have a happy and a healthy Passover!

I timed it; it takes 40 minutes for me to spin one ounce of fiber into singles that will make a heavy fingering weight yarn when plied with the other ounce. Not too bad! I could be faster and smoother, but that will come with practice. This is the “Sea Kelp” colourway on Falkland wool from Bee Mice Elf, which I purchased from someone’s destash on Ravelry.

It’s been a cold weekend here in Virginia. Saturday was sunny, but today has been gray and drizzly and not even 50 F/10 C – that’s significantly cooler than our average for this time of year! I wore my Highwayman Armwarmers when I brought my car to get inspected this morning, but then I started thinking that it would be nice to have another pair, perhaps with a thumb gusset, in brighter spring colours. I like the dark charcoal gray of the Highwaymans (Highwaymen?) but it just doesn’t fit with the bright greens and cheerful blossoms of spring!

The singles are super-twisted, which should give me a nice bouncy yarn when I’m finished. This bobbin doesn’t look very squishy, but I let the singles rest for way too long before I plied. When the yarn is washed and thwacked against the wall, it ought to come back to life! I am excited to be close to finishing another yarn that is worth knitting with, and doubly excited because I’m going to make up my own pattern for the new armwarmers, rather than using someone else’s. If it comes out well, I will (of course) share the pattern.

Like so many people I know, I am a procrastinator. Getting started is the hardest part of a project for me. Once I get going, the momentum will keep me working for a while. The other day I was linked to an amazing post from Make Great Stuff titled Getting Jump Started, and I thought it would be a great thing to try.

Sometimes I’m hesitant to start working on a project because I don’t think that I have enough time to really get into it. But most of my hobbies are cumulative, in that I don’t have to work in big chunks at a time. If I read a chapter a night, I’ll finish the book eventually. If I practice for twenty minutes a day, I’ll actually improve faster than if I spend two and a half hours at it once a week. And if I knit a few rows whenever I have some down time, I’ll have new socks sooner than if I only pick up the knitting when I have a lot of time free.

But twenty minutes… I have lots of twenty minuteses. Last night I had an hour free with nothing planned – I had three blocks of twenty minutes! Suddenly I felt as if I could do three things instead of none! So I read two chapters of my book, played guitar for a little bit, and finished the heel flap and turn on the second Sibling Sock (this bit took more than twenty minutes, but that’s kind of the point; you don’t have to stop working just because the timer goes off). Tonight I’ll pick up the stitches for the gusset and work on the decreases, and pretty soon I’ll be able to take the sock along with me again. I tend to leave even the simplest socks-in-progress at home when I’m at a section that requires counting (like a heel flap) or concentration (like a heel turn). Now that my wrists are feeling better and the sock will soon be past the heel, I can bring it out in public.

I did have some trouble with the heel turn numbers until I found where I’d scribbled notes for new numbers on the back of the pattern. Before I publish this, I will either have to knit sample heels in both sizes to check that I’ve got it right, or I will have to recruit some test knitters. I’m excited to be preparing a second pattern to share with the world! When I’ve finished the pair, I might treat myself to a pair of nice sock blockers so that I can take better pictures of them.

For the curious or potentially-interested, the Sibling Socks are knit with Trekking XXL on size 0 needles at 45 stitches/4 inches. There seems to be a lack of free fine-gauge sock patterns out there, and I hope this pattern will help fill that gap.

The Baby Bunny Hat was a free pattern that I got with the purchase of Plymouth Yarn, and I finished it in just four evenings of lazy knitting. The “Sweet Caroline” yarn wasn’t as hard on my hands as some other cotton yarns I’ve tried (Sugar ‘n Cream, I’m looking at you) and I was impressed by how soft it felt both as a ball and after it was knit. The single dyed strand in the yarn shaded nicely from one colour to the next and didn’t pool or flash at all. I think it looks a lot like vanilla ice cream with sprinkles.

The pattern was actually written for Baby Bunny yarn, which has slightly more yardage per 50g ball than the Sweet Caroline does. I have seven grams left over after knitting the three-month size, so there might even be enough for the six-month size… but you’d probably need to dip into a second ball for the 9-12 or 18-24 month sizes.

The only modification that I made to the pattern was that I worked in the round, rather than knitting flat and then seaming it up afterward. The stitch pattern gets broken up across double-pointed needles, but it was easy enough to keep my place. Perhaps some people prefer seaming to knitting in the round, but I’m not one of them!

Baby-sized knits are fantastic instant gratification projects. I always forget how tiny baby clothes are; it seemed like I’d barely cast on when it was time to weave the ends in! Yesterday I picked up a little pink bag and some tissue paper, and tomorrow I will mail the hat off! I really hope the mom-to-be likes it.

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!