Every year, Pirate-Husband and I go to Pennsic War, the biggest annual event in the SCA‘s calendar. We will join over 10,000 people for two weeks of food, fun, fighting, classes on every imaginable subject (link to pdf), shopping – and my favourite, sitting in the shade knitting socks and drinking beer.
This year, we’re actually making two separate trips up to the campsite. We’re leaving for War tonight, will set up our tent tomorrow, and unfortunately have to come home on Sunday so that we can work for three more days before our vacation actually begins. But then, we’re off for a long relaxing trip into the Middle Ages!
I haven’t even decided what knitting I’m bringing yet. On one hand, I could crank out baby knits for my friends who are expecting. On the other, I could finish my Time Traveler socks, which is sort of fitting for a time-traveling vacation. Maybe I’ll bring both and alternate? Maybe I’ll begin a new project?
Not only are we excited about going on vacation, but we’re excited about a new addition to our family. No, we’re not going to have a baby – at least, not a human baby. We’re adopting two little kittens! Here is a video I got of them playing at their foster-mom’s house the other day. She is going to keep them for us until we get back.
We are going to adopt the first two kittens in the video, the small black one and the first gray-and-white one. They will be about three months old when we bring them home. We have potential names picked out for them already, but I want to make sure the kittens and their names go together. Once we’re sure of their names, I’ll let you all know!
Please forgive me if there’s less knitting and spinning in the next few months than usual. I’m going to have to confine my yarn to quarters to keep it from investigative paws and claws.
But, in spinning news, I won a prize in the Tour de Fleece in the Natural Yarns category for the Jacob roving! Granted, it was a prize picked by random number generator, but still – I won a prize! I never win anything and so this came as a massive surprise. I had a choice of prizes, so I picked a BFL/silk blend from Susan’s Spinning Bunny, in the “Sherbert and Ernie” colourway. Of all the available options, this seemed most unlike what I’d buy for myself, so I chose it under the theory that if I never expand my colour preferences then I’ll never know what I might like.
Pirate-Husband and I have been in our mountain house for two and a half years now, and yet, only two of the rooms are really what I’d call “finished” – the living room, and the library. There is so much yet that I want to do! As we’ve settled in, we’ve each found our spots and niches. The upstairs room, with the loft bed and slanted ceiling, has become my office. Pirate-Husband works from home and has claimed the library as his office, and he’s also got a workbench in the garage where he tinkers, makes steampunky things out of leather and metal and wood, takes stuff apart and puts it together again.
So if he’s got a work space and a craft space, I’d like one too – for fairness, of course. The back room in the basement is almost exactly perfect for what I’m thinking of, too. It’s our laundry room, and our storage closet for our SCA gear is there. There’s an inset space in which we’d like to put a second freezer for food storage, but for the most part the room is going completely unused.
There’s already water to the room for the laundry, so it shouldn’t be too hard to split off the line and install a slop sink. Drainage might be a little more complicated, but I bet it could be done. With a sink, I could wash fleece and mix dyes, though I’d still have to bring dyed fibre or yarn upstairs to simmer on the stove. Hrrm, unless I got a little propane-powered burner. That’s a possibility, and would keep dyes out of our food-prep kitchen.
I’d like to run a workbench down the entire back wall of the room, attaching it into the wall so that it wouldn’t wobble. It wouldn’t be too high, because I’m shortish. There I would be able to keep my drum carder and sewing machine. I’ve even been thinking about getting a wool picker, perhaps bench-style rather than the torture-chamber-esque cradle picker style. I don’t think I could support myself on a fibre-y business income, but I bet I could make some reasonable pocket change selling carded batts and handspun yarn on Etsy.
Underneath the workbench, I would have shelves and drawers for storage space, except at the end I’d leave a bit of an overhang so that I’d have a place to sit and use the sewing machine. I don’t sew very often, but I’m drawn to the idea more and more – if only I had a good workspace! The first things I’d sew would be quilted covers for the carder, picker, and sewing machine, to keep them safe and dust-free.
The room itself needs some work. The laundry closet is in desperate need of new doors, and the walls could use a coat of paint. I’d install good lighting in the ceiling and scissor-arm lights along the walls, so that I’d always have enough light – that room has but one small window and doesn’t get much sun. Then I’d hang inspirational artwork everywhere!
I really enjoyed this video that’s been making the rounds, in which Renate Hiller of the Fiber Craft Studio at the Threefold Educational Center discusses the value of handwork, on what it means to create and to be part of the Divine. It might be getting a little woo, but I believe that we are all a part of the Divine, and that by creating, we are expressing our own internal divinity. That’s all I’ll say about it here; I’m not trying to talk about religion but about the spiritual aspect that’s inherent in the act of creating. Regardless of one’s religion, beliefs, or lack thereof, I feel that there is a something that connects all of us artists and creators together.
In the video, Mrs. Hiller says that “there is a loss of understanding of the value of things, of the meaning of things,” when we don’t engage in the activity of creation, and I couldn’t agree more. When I spin – especially with the drop spindle – I think about the generations of spinners before me. I think about how the sails on ships were all woven from threads spun on a simple drop spindle. How much more does a piece of fabric mean when you’ve put in the long hours to spin the yarn and then to weave or knit or crochet it into something functional? How much less does it mean when you can just go buy it at the store?
Everything she says in the brief video rings true for me, but this particular quote really resonated: [Spinning]… is an activity that brings us closer to the cosmos; at the same time, we create something that is useful & beautiful.
Everyone knows that the yarn diet goes out the window when a friend announces a pregnancy, right?
I’m pleased that the solid red matches the red in the variegated colourway so well, and I’m curious to try knitting with this yarn. I generally don’t like cotton yarn, but it’s so good for babies’ sensitive skin. This yarn, Cascade Fixation, has 1.7% elastic in it. Will that help mitigate the harshness of knitting with cotton yarn, or will the elastic only make it even harder to knit up?
There’s really not much to blog about the project yet, since the yarn is still neatly wound up just as it came from the store. It will soon become a little hat and a pair of booties, but first I want to finish the Timey-Wimey socks. The baby isn’t due until late December, so I’m not hurried at all.
In non-knitting news (there’s such a thing?) I’ve mentioned a couple of times that I live on top of a mountain, and I thought it might be nice to share the view from my window. It was just luck that I had my camera on the table with me, since it’s usually nowhere in sight. But I’d just taken the pictures of the yarn and still had the camera out. When I saw the deer drinking from my fishpond, I grabbed the opportunity to shoot this quick video. Hope you like it! :)
Knitting Vintage Socks has been on my wishlist for quite some time now, and I finally gave in and bought it for myself. While there are several patterns in the book that I could see myself knitting, it was really the Evening Stockings for a Young Lady (Ravelry link) that finally did it for me. These stockings are beautiful; every time I see another pair completed, I want to knit them for myself. For those of you without a Ravelry account, here’s a link to a picture of the socks on Flickr. And here’s another, showing the delightful calf shaping. I love how the ribbing goes down into the heel flap, and the ‘seam stitch’ formed by purling down the center.
Disappointingly, many of the patterns seem to be one-size-fits-anyone-but-Pirate, so I expect that I’ll have to make some adjustments to get a proper fit. Extending the length of a sock foot is easy enough, but what does she mean by “fits a size 7 foot”? Is she referring to length or width there? Swatching will almost certainly be a necessity for most, if not all, of the stitch patterns. I’m not a fan of the “just go up a needle size” theory of enlarging socks, but I can figure out where stitches can be added to or subtracted from a pattern to make it slightly larger or smaller, and I’m not afraid of tinkering with a pattern to get it to fit well, whether the adjustments need to be in length or width. Hooray for intrepid knitting!
There are other patterns in the book that I’d like to knit as well, but I think the Evening Stockings will come first. (After I’ve worked through some of the patterns that I’ve already queued up, I mean.) I’ve been really into the idea of kneesocks lately, even though I know they will take forever to knit, and there are several patterns in this book that fit the bill.
The book includes a variety of heels and toes, with detailed instructions on how to make them. This will definitely come in handy when I’m designing more of my own sock patterns! I think the only other sock book that is missing from my shelf (for now) is Cookie A.’s Sock Innovation. I’m not as into the patterns in Cookie’s book, but its real value is in the wealth of information about designing socks.
In actual knitting news, the Timey-Wimey sock is coming along. Although the Felici yarn doesn’t travel well at all, I’ve brought it with me today to keep me occupied during the farewell lunch that we’re having for a co-worker. We’re a fairly large group, and whenever we go out to lunch together it seems to take forever to get everyone drinks, take orders, and bring out the food. My co-workers might look at me funny for knitting while we wait, but I’m glad to have something to do with my hands that doesn’t involve eating large quantities of breadsticks!
I’d been putting off writing out the pattern for the Sibling Socks for too long. There were a few portions of my notes that made sense to me, but I knew that I’d have to be more clear if I wanted to share the pattern. So after I made myself sit down with my notes and just write them out already, I felt that I deserved some kind of prize for getting the pattern published and released into the wild.
There are some things I’m already wondering about – should I have made the heel flap longer on the larger size, or is that the kind of thing that knitters will adjust based on the sock’s recipient? Did I describe what I meant clearly enough? Are there any horrible mistakes or typos? I’m sure it will be just fine, and if it’s not, then surely the first few people to knit the pattern won’t hesitate to let me know if I’ve made an error.
My reward for publishing, with some poking from my sister the Ninja, was to cast on for a new pair of Jaywalkers with the Felici Time Traveler yarn. First, I figured out that if I wanted the socks to match, I’d lose the least amount of yarn by starting with the red stripe. Then I cast on and worked on the cuff while we watched Saturday Night Live. I knit while we watched the F1 race in Monaco, I knit while Pirate-Husband watched the Mazda MX-5 race at Virginia International Raceway, and I knit (and drank beer) while he played Assassin’s Creed 2. I haven’t had a whole day to just sit around and knit in a long time. It was lovely.
I like the Felici yarn, but I’m not yet sure if I love it. It is soft and it smells nice, but it feels just slightly thinner than what I think of as ‘standard’ sock yarn like Regia, Lang, or Lana Grossa. So far I’ve had minimal trouble with it being splitty, even in working the double decreases. The real test will be how well the finished socks wear, but they’re going so fast that it won’t be too long before I find out. (The socks are further along than this now, but it got too dark to take good pictures.)
This snugly-fitting ribbed sock design grew from a shortage of fine-gauge sock patterns. I was working with Trekking XXL to make a pair of socks for my sworn-brother Michael. When I swatched on size 0 needles, I got an gauge of 45 stitches to 4 inches – somewhat incredible, since most of the sock patterns I’ve seen are written for more like 32 stitches to 4 inches. I decided that I would just design my own pattern for this fine yarn, and I called it “Brother’s Socks.”
After I knit the same pattern in a slightly smaller size for myself, they were given a new name – “Sibling Socks” – and I am pleased to be able to share the pattern in both sizes! The ribbing means these would be great gift socks even if you don’t know your recipient’s exact width, since it will stretch to accommodate his or her foot.
SIZE: M [L] (blue colorway #71 shown in size L, brown colorway #90 in size M)
FINISHED MEASUREMENTS: To fit a foot that’s 8.25 [9.5] inches around at widest point.
YARN: Trekking XXL [75% wool, 25% nylon; 100g/459 yards] or any other light fingering weight yarn to get gauge. I needed 1.25 balls of Trekking to knit the larger size, because they’d been requested with longer legs. You could probably get away with only one ball if you make the leg shorter or if you have smaller feet. I made the leg shorter on the smaller size, and had plenty of yarn left over.
GAUGE: 45 sts/42 rounds = 4″ in stockinette stitch
Important Copyright Information: The Sibling Sock Knitting Pattern by Knitting Pirate is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. You may make copies for your own personal use, but you may not sell copies of the pattern. You may sell the socks you make provided that credit is given to the Knitting Pirate for the design. If you have any questions about what you can or can’t do with this pattern, please feel free to contact the Knitting Pirate.
This is the last yarn I’ll be getting for a while, I think! It is Cascade Heritage Paints in the “Isle of Skye” colourway, and it seems like the perfect colours for Mom. I hope she doesn’t mind the tinges of purple amongst the blues!
I plan to make a simple ribbed sock, 64 stitches around, since my 64-stitch socks fit her just fine. The only measurement I need to get is the length of her foot, and then I’m good to go – as soon as I finish some other projects! (Psst, Mom, can you measure your foot for me please?)
It is becoming more difficult by the day to refrain from casting on for a new project! I’m doing my best to hold out but I don’t know how long I can manage…
KnitPicks has my vote based on shipping speed alone – I ordered this yarn only two days ago, and here it is. That is amazingly fast! This is the first time I’ve seen the Felici yarn in person, and already I’m pleased with it. It feels very soft and smells deliciously of wool. The only disappointment I have is that the skeins don’t begin with the same colour, so I’m going to have to skip a few stripes of one in order to make matching socks with the stripes properly lined up. It will be incredibly difficult to keep myself from casting on for the new Jaywalkers tonight. I haven’t been this excited about starting a new pair of socks in a while!
When I told Pirate-Husband about this yarn, he quipped, “If you knit the socks for me, then you could be The Time Traveler’s Wife.” *groan* Awful.
On Saturday, I went to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. My car turned 25k on the way, which is sort of amazing given that I’ve only had it for thirteen months. I drove up by myself and had a lovely time shopping, aiming mostly for things that I haven’t tried before. After lunch of a pretty good, not great lamb gyro I met up with friends Josh, Efrain, Sam and Jen and wandered around with them for a while. I helped Sam and Jen each pick out a drop spindle from Turnstyles, after looking through the selections at several other booths but not finding the ones that were just right.
This is what I bought:
On the left, eight ounces of Ashland Bay merino in “Lapis”. I know this is really standard commercial top, but it’s also quite nice to spin with, and I liked the colour. On the right, 4 ounces of a 50-50 merino/tencel blend from Bonkers Handmade Originals. I’ve never spun with tencel before, but the colours really shine and I couldn’t resist it.
Two four ounce packages of a merino-tussah-bamboo blend from Bullen’s Wullens. Bamboo is another new-to-me fibre. I was only going to get one package, but they were offering a deal for purchasing two, so…
On the left, a six ounce sampler of Jacob roving from Firefly Farm, another new-to-me fibre. I bought this with the thought that I’d spin each one separately and make some colourwork mittens or a hat. Or both, depending on how much yarn I get out of it. On the right, something I’ve been wanting to try for a while – roving that will spin into a tweedy yarn. It’s Corriedale from a sheep named Lilly, dyed with indigo and iron by Handspun by Stefania, with multicolour silk noil carded in to make the tweeds.
Lastly, eight ounces of merino pencil roving from Pucker Brush Farm. I really liked the colours, and I’ve never spun anything from pencil roving before. I think I’m going to like it! At this point, my backpack was stuffed full and I was (amazingly!) still under the budget I’d set for myself, so I stopped buying stuff. I’m sure if I kept looking, I would have found something else that I loved, but I resisted. We all headed back to Josh’s house to sort and crow over our loot, and so I could teach Jen and Sam to use their new spindles. That’s when Josh reminded me that he’d been holding onto a metric ton of roving from his former housemate, and offered to give some of it to me…
Four giant balls of mystery wool roving, averaging 420 grams each. It was processed some years ago by Frankenmuth Woolen Mill. Much of it was marked ‘unwashed’ or ‘rewash’, but there is very little vegetable matter in it. It feels like it has some lanolin, but a lot less than I think completely unwashed wool would have. If I had known that I’d be getting over 3.5 pounds of naturally-coloured roving, I might not have bought that Jacob sampler to do colourwork! I was also given 470g of alpaca blanket, two in brown and one in white. It’s unwashed as well, with some vegetable matter but not much, and it’s a lot higher quality than the second cuts I had at home to play/practice with. And all of that was only about a quarter of what was there! Sam and Jen each took another quarter, and we saved some for Janis.
It was a lot of fun teaching Sam and Jen to spin. They both picked up the basics of park-and-draft very quickly, and pretty soon Efrain was making a drop spindle from a CD and a chopstick so that he could try as well. Sam offered to buy my Ashford Traditional, Patience, from me – but I’m still not sure I want to sell her! I go back and forth about it. I love how she looks but I don’t spin on her since I got Grace, the Kromski Sonata. On the first hand, I have some emotional attachment to Patience since she was a birthday present. On the other, wouldn’t it be better if someone was making yarn with her?
But, in spinning news, I won a prize in the Tour de Fleece in the Natural Yarns category for the Jacob roving! Granted, it was a prize picked by random number generator, but still – I won a prize! I never win anything and so this came as a massive surprise. I had a choice of prizes, so I picked a BFL/silk blend from Susan’s Spinning Bunny, in the “Sherbert and Ernie” colourway. Of all the available options, this seemed most unlike what I’d buy for myself, so I chose it under the theory that if I never expand my colour preferences then I’ll never know what I might like. 
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