The Knitting Pirate

As much as I think it would be great fun to join the Knitting Olympics and/or the Ravelympics, I’m not letting myself do it. The idea of the Knitting Olympics is to cast on a project during the Opening Ceremonies and finish it before the torch goes out, something that would be a challenge for you to finish in the seventeen days of the Olympics. There is one exception; the Ravelympics has an event for finishing a work in progress that hasn’t been touched in over a month. I briefly thought about joining that one, for Napramach.

But no.

Firstly, I hate knitting to deadlines. I get all stressed about it and the rest of my life suffers while I commit myself to doing nothing but knitting in all of my spare time. Sure, sometimes that happens – like last year, when I finished a baby blanket the night before going to meet the new baby. Given how grumpy I got doing that, I’m not going to sign myself up for doing it on purpose.

And secondly, whenever I knit to deadlines, I have a tendonitis flare-up in my arms and then I have to take a break from everything for a couple of weeks.

I will be cheering you on from the sidelines, you crazy knitters who are going for gold medals. You make it look so easy, and your work is all so beautiful! And of course, I will be watching the Olympic athletes in Vancouver. Figure skating has always been my favourite of the winter events; I wanted to be a figure skater when I was a little kid, and part of me still holds on to that dream. They make it look so easy, especially in pairs skating where he seems to effortlessly lift her above his head, gliding around the rink holding her up with just one hand.

Here’s to all of us – the knitters, the athletes, the participants and the cheerers-on – here’s to the best in all of us, however we may express it.

Last weekend, while my house in Virginia was buried in more than two feet of snow, I went to Canada. Ironically, the weather there was beautiful and clear, if really cold. It was even too cold for me to want to skate on the canal. Instead, my sworn-sister the Ninja and I, along with our friend Amy, took an afternoon to visit yarn stores.

Our first stop was Wool N’ Things in Orleans, where I was thrilled to find some of the discontinued Jo Sharp Silkroad DK Tweed, the same yarn that I used to knit my Fleep-Tops. I picked up two skeins in Cedar, a gorgeous dark green with red and yellow flecks. They’ll probably become another pair of Fleeps, as backup for when my first pair inevitably wears out. The green totally doesn’t match my dark blue winter coat, but it’s time for a new coat anyway. Perhaps something in green, or preferably black. Black goes with everything.

Then we headed over to Yarn Forward in Ottawa proper, where I bought two skeins of this super-soft (and superwash!) Lang Merino DK in a gray so dark it’s almost black. My first thought was that it might make a pair of Fleeps for Michael, but he wanted something thicker and tweedier, so I’m going to use it for a pair of classy office armwarmers for myself and pick up some Rowan Felted Tweed in as black as it comes for him. Not that I mind being able to use this pettably soft stuff for myself, not at all! I am thinking about making something like these Cafe au Lait Mitts from SnapperKnits, or perhaps I will come up with my own pattern for them.

I did have a disappointment this year: My old Stellar Toque, now over four years old, may be nearing retirement. It’s gotten stretched out and too large, and lets the wind through to my ears. I am thinking that before next Winterlude, I will knit a colourwork hat with earflaps and line it with fleece. We saw many of them in the Byward Market when we were there for the Stew Cook-Off on Friday, and I was seriously tempted to buy one – but why buy what I can knit? Pirate-Husband suggested that I could salvage the Stellar Toque by knitting earflaps onto it and lining it with fleece, instead of making a whole new hat. I could also felt it a little to shrink it and make it more windproof.

Sometimes it’s difficult to choose a traveling project without casting on for something new, and sometimes it’s really obvious. Fortunately for me, this is one of the obvious times! On Wednesday I’ve a four and a half hour train trip, followed by an eight hour drive on Thursday, and then a long weekend in Ottawa with my sworn-sister, the Knitting Ninja and some of our friends.

In preparation, I cast on last night for the second of the Sibling Socks, an easy project to bring along that not only won’t take up too much space, but also won’t be too hard to work on while drinking beer and playing games. I haven’t traveled by train since I was in college, and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to knit without getting motion-sickness. I’m going to give it a try!

Here’s something that you might find hard to believe: I turned down a trip to WEBS. One of the potential routes to Canada puts us in the neighborhood of America’s Yarn Store, and I actually said “let’s not go this year.” We’ve stopped at WEBS for the past few years, so I feel as though I’ve accomplished my pilgrimage as a knitter. I really don’t need any impulse yarn, and I’m sure to buy some if we stop. And… we’re going to visit yarn stores in Ottawa. Not that the exchange rate is super-favorable to American dollars at the moment, but I’d rather see if I can pick up a souvenir from another country that I might not be able to get in the States.

Finally, a completed project to show! Ribbed socks for Michael, in Cascade Heritage Paints #9922. He bought the yarn for me back in November, and I broke the queue to cast on for them.

This is my new favorite sock yarn. It’s smooth, yet squooshy. It got a little splitty around the SSKs, but so does most yarn, since working that stitch takes some of the twist out. The colors were evenly distributed without any garish pooling. There was a little bit of pooling over the gusset, which is expected, and a vague hint of spiraling down the foot.

It’s a simple pattern, but I am considering writing it up for publication anyway. Like the Highwayman Armwarmers, it would be a freebie. This time around I would use a Creative Commons license, most likely Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike – in other words, you can distribute the pattern as long as I get credit; you can’t sell the pattern itself but you can sell the items you knit from it; and you can make changes and distribute them under the same license. I’m a big supporter of Creative Commons licensing; why keep something to myself if there’s no good reason to do so?

(Speaking of the Highwayman Armwarmers, one of my readers was kind enough to inform me of a typo in the pattern. It’s been corrected and a new version has been uploaded, both here and on Ravelry.)

On Tuesday night, I stayed up too late in order to turn the heel on my second handspun sock. I may have had some difficulty counting, though I hate to admit it. A short-row heel is not hard to do, so I don’t know why I was having such trouble. With thirty-six stitches, I just needed to work back and forth, wrapping the next-to-last stitch as the rows got shorter, until there were twelve wrapped on each side and twelve unwrapped in the middle. So back and forth I went, keeping a mental count: One, one. Two, two. Three, three… until I got up to Eight, Seven. How did that happen? I tinked back until everything matched and tried again, and got it right the second time.

The reason for wanting the heel turned Tuesday is that on Wednesday, I was finally able to rejoin my old crowd, the Reston Stitch ‘n Bitch, for their third anniversary celebration. We had about 40 knitters (and crocheters, and embroiderers) there and it was a wonderful time! I can’t say that I got too much knitting done, but at least it was all stockinette and I don’t have to worry too much about messing that up. We meet at Cosi, which was as warm and welcoming as I remembered. Our group takes up the entire back of the restaurant! Towards the end of the evening, our organizer Marie organized cheesecake for everyone.

I think I am going to have to make more of an effort to get back there on some Wednesdays. Maybe not every week, since I do have to stay late at work in order to get to Reston at the right time… but some weeks. Yeah. I miss everyone. It was awesome to go back.

Knitter’s Day at Veronica’s house was great! There were about a dozen people there, a half-ton of food, and *lots* of knitting. I brought the ribbed socks and got to within a few inches of the toe decreases. It will be great to finish a project, for the first time in months. Gonna crank through the rest of the socks-in-progress and get more of that finishing going on!

And I’ve made plans to go back to my old SnB next week for their anniversary celebration. I was there at the beginning; I would love to revisit everyone for an evening and catch up again. Besides, if I don’t spend the whole night talking, I’m sure I’ll make lots of progress on whatever project I bring.

In non-knitting domesticity, Pirate-Husband and I have been using the stand mixer to make lots of bread. The more loaves we make, the better they get! The latest was an oatmeal-raisin breakfast bread. We brought a loaf to my parents’ on Sunday, and they loved it. Last night we tried a recipe that could be used as a sandwich bread for cold cuts, with half white and half whole wheat flour. It was still in the oven when I went to bed, so I didn’t get any – but Pirate-Husband emailed to tell me that it’s “a semi-wheaty sandwich bread. Slightly chewy, soft, but it holds together well. The crust is perfect, it could be store-bought.” Hooray!

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!

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?

Not a single stitch. I was having too much fun visiting family, eating a ridiculous amount of food, joining good conversations, and, well, having no need to hide in a corner with yarn.

However, I did discover that my cousin Sara knits, and we had a good laugh over our matching Stripey Striped Scarves. Seems that we used at least two of the same colorways, which is pretty funny. I got to show off the Fleep-Tops, too, because it was cold enough to require gloves at night.

But now that I’m home, and I have the whole day ahead of me to spend as I wish, I think I will spend at least some of it with yarn.

Last night, I went out with Pirate-Husband and a bunch of his now-former co-workers to celebrate his last day at his job. He is moving on from being “Field Services Manager” at a construction engineering firm, to being “Vice President of Business Development” at the marketing arm of a company selling energy management services. It is a big, exciting step up!

Anyway, because it was his celebration, I volunteered to be the designated driver, but I got a little restless after I had switched from beer to water and everyone else was still drinking. Fortunately, I had the Sibling Sock in my purse. (Why yes, I did choose that purse specifically because it has a compartment which is perfectly sized for a 100g ball of sock yarn and the in-progress sock!) I thought about it for a while. After all, you never know how people will react to knitting, and–

Then I came to a conclusion: Who cares?

I knit about an inch of sock while we sat and talked, and at first everyone was interested – ooh, what’s that? I can only knit scarves. I never learned to knit but wow, that looks great! After about five minutes, my knitting just sort of faded into the background, and became a non-issue. It was perfect.