The Knitting Pirate

About three and a half years ago, Pirate-Husband cracked up his motorcycle and a couple of ribs. While we were in the doctor’s office waiting for the x-rays to come back, I was working on knitting a sock (that ended up not fitting, but whatever) and he asked me if I would knit a pair of socks for him. I found it hard to say “no” to a man in a hospital gown, and eventually ended up making him a simple pair of brown socks, which he loves. In real life one isn’t shorter than the other, I promise. It’s just that one sort of slouched down when I took the picture.

Two weeks ago Pirate-Husband was in a car accident. Does this mean I need to make him another pair of socks now?

Here’s a picture of the results of a Miata kissing a Mercedes. Pirate-Husband is fortunately mostly undamaged. We spent a very un-fun afternoon in the ER of our local hospital, and this week he was seen by an orthopedist. The news is good: he’s only got a bruise on his knee that goes down to the bone, but nothing that won’t heal in a few months. Nothing was broken, there was no blood inside or out, and although we don’t know much due to the hospital’s privacy policies, we are thankful that the driver of the Mercedes was also not seriously hurt.

Our Miata’s been totaled, of course, and I’m pretty sure the Mercedes was as well. People keep asking if Pirate-Husband’s next car will be larger. He laughs and answers that his small car sacrificed itself to save his life, so why would he get anything but another Miata?

I do already have the yarn that will become his next pair of socks – this Opal Rainforest yarn in the Tiger colourway that I searched for years to find, and finally bought from a Raveler on the other side of the planet. Pirate-Husband likes tigers and I thought it would be neat to knit him a tiger-striped pair of socks. I’m not starting them just yet since I’m enjoying knitting for myself so much right now, but they’re definitely in the queue! I bought two balls so that we could have matching tiger-paw socks. I’m cute like that.

I have really missed knitting on a sock that I like. I like the yarn, I like my size 1 needles, I like knitting stockinette in the round, I like the stripes, I like everything related to this sock. I like that I know at exactly what point in the striping sequence I cast on for the cuff and when I started the heel, so that I’ll be able to make the second sock perfectly match the first. Pirate-Husband tells me that I am working some kind of awesome magic to make striped socks line up, and I’m not going to disabuse him of the notion.

While I did get the ribbing done before departing for New York, I like that I knit the entire rest of the sock leg while chatting with my maternal grandmother about her early dates with my grandpa to jazz clubs in Manhattan. It sounds so romantic! She told me that she ordered a “claret lemonade” and now I’d like to try one, just to see what it tastes like. I looked up the recipe: four ounces of bordeaux, one ounce of simple syrup, and 3/4 ounce lemon juice. Hmmm. Could be interesting!

Last night I knit the heel flap and perhaps on my lunch break today I’ll turn the heel. I like that I’m gentle enough with myself to recognize when I’ve sworn to something that isn’t working for me, and to change it – in this case to let myself cast on for an enjoyable sock, even though I haven’t finished previous projects. It’s all good.

I like that the baby for whom I’m crocheting the hexagon blanket was born yesterday. Both mother and child are doing well. (And now I really must get back to finishing up that blanket!)

I feel guilty for even thinking about it, but I’m considering the idea of casting on a new sock before I’ve finished the second Stripey Striped Sock. The thing is, I can’t really knit on the Stripey Striped Sock for very long before my hands start to ache, so it’s not a very good traveling sock at all. But then, I know that once it’s finished, I’m really going to love it. The first sock, despite my issues with the yarn, fits perfectly and is delightfully colourful.

I’m going to be hanging out with friends over Memorial Day weekend and I know I’m going to want to have a sock in my hands, so I may be breaking my promise and casting on a simple, 64-stitch, stockinette sock for myself. I’m going to go back to the oldest yarns in my stash, too.

These Lana Grossa Meilenweits are two of my earliest sock yarn purchases. I got them from Red Bird Knits, which no longer seems to be selling yarn, during a “Socktober” sale. One of them is going to become my new traveling sock – but which? I’m leaning towards the brown and gray Magico as I think it will look better in a stockinette, especially the thin jaquard sections. The more colourful Fun and Stripes colourway would probably look good in a simple ribbing as well as in stockinette. Guess that answers that question, then!

I’d like to see just how much of the Stripey Striped Sock I can get done in small bursts. Doctor’s appointments, lunch breaks, you name it – I’m planning to pull that sucker out every chance I get. Meanwhile, my plans were shattered on Monday when I went to the allergist and had a perfect twenty-minute window of knitting… during which my hand was numb from the shots and so no new stripes were added to the sock. Boo.

This weekend I’ve two five-hour car rides to look forward to, along with lots of family time as we’re all getting together to celebrate my grandmother’s 90th birthday, so I think I’ll bring the Pink Sweater for the car and the new sock for the family time. Yeah, so about that “considering”… I’ve considered, and decided. There shall be a New Sock!

I’ve been carrying the second Stripey Striped Sock with me almost wherever I go, but almost never working on it. However, I’m not allowing myself to cast on for any new socks until I finish this one. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. Rien. I have ten stripes completed and 42 to go (if I count the heel as three stripes, which I am, even though it’s not striped, because it will take longer than two stripes). Last night I put two stripes on while I was waiting for bread to rise, and I’ll do another stripe or two on my lunch break today. It’s not the greatest traveling sock ever, but it’s what I have and so I will work on it. I am determined. I will not start any new socks until this one is done.

In fact, I have a plan to refrain from starting any new projects until all my current projects are done, excepting the Pink One’s Sweater, because that’s not really a new project so much as it is the other half of the Sweaters for Twin Niecelets project, and that’s one of the things that I’m on a deadline for. The twins are expected in the end of March, now. I’d better hurry.

The other night I took out all my sock yarns under the pretense of airing out the tote and moving the bag of cedar shavings around. I don’t expect the cedar to really keep any bugs away, but it does make the yarn smell nice. Just looking at the pile of yarn was enough to give me inspiration and motivation to get going on the works in progress. I really want to start something new!

“Starting something new” is one reason I’m really enjoying working on the hexagon blanket. If I concentrate, I can work up a hexagon in just half an hour. Each new hex feels a little bit like starting a new project, but then I get to watch the blanket grow by leaps and bounds. There are 23 hexagons done, 16 to go, and then an edging which will probably be made up of a few stripes of single crochet. I don’t think I’ll use all seven colours; that might be overkill. We’ll see when I get to that point.

The Purple One’s Sweater has just a little more of the body to knit, and then two lace panels to work up. It goes quickly when I sit down to work on it, but so far I think the best knitting time I’ve gotten on this project was on an Amtrak. Maybe I need to take another train ride so I can get it done faster…

I brought the Stripey Striped Sock with me to Canada, because it fit in my purse and was easy to carry around, but I can’t knit fine-gauge work like socks in moving vehicles or I get horrible headaches. I can, however, knit with worsted weight yarn and size 8 needles! So I also brought along this yarn, which is KnitPicks Swish Worsted in Amethyst Heather, to begin the first of the sweaters that I’m making for the soon-to-be twin niecelets, whose due date has been moved up to the end of March. I’m using the free Presto Chango pattern for both girls; one will get this purple and the other will get a matching sweater in Carnation Pink.

The sweater is begun from the back hem and is knit up and over the shoulders and sleeves before splitting for the two front sides; the button-on lace panel is worked separately. I got started on the train up to Connecticut and was able to get about halfway up the back before arriving. I knit a little bit in the hotel while drinking beer with friends, and I knit in the car on the way back from Canada, and I knit on the train coming home.

(I did not once take out the Stripey Striped Sock to work on it. I think I have built up such mental resistance to it that I can’t even stand the sight of it. I *will* make myself finish that damned sock before the year is up.)

The Presto Chango pattern is, so far, quite good. The yarn… that’s another story. It’s superwash merino, but it feels squeaky like acrylic, and it’s incredibly splitty. I had to drop down to correct a stitch and getting the yarn back onto the needles was a real pain. I’ve got it so I’m going to use it, and it’s washable so it’s great for baby sweaters, but I don’t think I’ll ever be buying this yarn again. It’s unfortunate, because it’s inexpensive and it comes in some really great colours, but I’d rather knit with yarn that feels good in my hands.

I’ve been carrying the Timey Wimey Jaywalkers around with me for months, putting on a stripe here and there, not really paying attention to how long the foot was getting. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that when I measured the sock, I’d gone several rounds past where I should have started the toe! Grumbling, I un-knitted three rounds, got all the stitches re-aligned properly, and then put the sock on a corner of my desk while I worked on other things and went to Canada on vacation. (Yes, Canada. Yes, in February. Yes, I’m crazy. I’ll tell you all about the Canadian trip in the next entry.)

The sock stared at me every time I sat down.

When I couldn’t take it any more, I told myself that even though I had lots of deadlined projects for babies to work on, I could take an hour to finish the stupid sock and cross the project off my list. So I did! The two socks are almost, but not exactly matched. The first one has a little tip of white at the toe; the second doesn’t. This may have been due to dyeing discrepancies, but more likely it was changes in my tension as I worked.

This was my first time using KnitPicks Felici yarn. I thought it was good in some ways and less good in others. For the good, it is quite soft and smells deliciously of wool and dye. For the bad, it’s slightly thinner than regular sock yarn. Also, the two balls I had started in wildly different places in the striping sequence, so I lost a significant amount of yarn in making the socks match up. (Yes, I like my striped socks to match. Yes, I’m willing to sacrifice sock height to get matching socks. Yes, I’m crazy.)

These are the third pair of Jaywalkers I’ve made. I guess that makes it my favourite sock pattern? It really is a great pattern: the socks fit snugly, striping yarn is shown off even better than usual, and the chevron pattern is interesting but not at all difficult to remember, so they make good traveling socks. I’m sure I’ll knit another pair of them eventually.

Aubrey M. Tinyfierce lost her fight with FIP yesterday. In the end, her fierce was just too tiny for a disease which is inevitably fatal. To say that we’ll miss her terribly is an understatement. At least for now, her picture will stay in the banner of my Etsy shop, which should be opening for business in the next couple of months. If I can’t do it to support her any more, I can still do it in her memory – and to build up a fund for Floyd T. Underfoot, should he happen to get sick. Right now we’re grateful that he’s healthy as a horse, sleek and energetic.

Friend Stef came over yesterday to keep me company and help distract me from thinking about Aubrey too much. I showed her the Winterlude Hat ™ which I’d blocked over a perfectly-sized ceramic bowl¹, and she fell in love with its awesomeness. Then, because she has more sewing experience than I do, she helped me pin the fleece lining for the hat. It went much more smoothly for having an extra pair of hands involved. We had a good time chatting about craftsy things while I began sewing it up. I’m so close to being done with it and I can’t wait to try it out when I get to Canada in a week and a half.

While I’ve got the sewing box out, I need to sew the magnet-snaps into Michael’s Fleeps. And on the subject of projects which are really, really close to completion, I’m within a few stripes of the toe on the second Wibbly Wobbly, Timey Wimey Jaywalker. I’ve been working on it here and there while I wait for things like car maintenance and allergy shots. The other day I pulled it out to knit a few stripes and was actually surprised to discover that it’s almost finished!

I didn’t get much done on the blanket this past weekend, but I plan to work a couple of hexagons in tonight. And soon, if I’m feeling tired of crochet and want to get back to knitting, I can start on the pink and purple sweaters for the twin niecelets.

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1. Which shall be my hat-blocking bowl forevermore, when it’s not serving its usual role as a fruit dish.

Some of you may have already known, and some of you have guessed, but most of my readers have been curiously wondering about the super-sekrit project with Ben Kenobi’s face as the only available picture. Well, the mystery is finally unveiled; I am proud to show off the Paraphernalia Socks (link to free pattern on Ravelry) that I knit for Pirate-Husband’s Chanukah present! I surprised him with the gift last night, just after we lit the first candle on the menorah.

It took just over two 50g balls of Regia Tweed to make his socks. I estimate that I used maybe a fifth of the third ball, which leaves enough for… well, for leftovers. I had to make a couple of modifications to the original pattern. Firstly and most necessary, I added many stitches to accommodate Pirate-Husband’s wide feet, casting on 84 instead of the pattern’s 68. As a result, I had to do a lot of math to get the heel numbers right. The second change I made was much easier and purely for aesthetics reasons: I knit the cables on the second sock so that they would cross in the opposite direction as the ones on the first sock. I thought this would give it a certain… je ne sais quoi. Non? Pirate-Husband thought it was pretty cool, too.

I’ve been working on these socks in secret for a really, really long time – I started them in April 2009, and only worked on them while Pirate-Husband was out of the house, in and around other projects that I needed to finish. I was afraid to take them out while he was home, for fear that he’d come upstairs before I had a chance to hide them. With no real deadline on the socks, I figured that it would be better to take my time and be sure of keeping the secret. I really didn’t want him to find out! He hadn’t even known about the yarn, since I’d snuck it into the house right under his nose. This is often a point of contention on the Ravelry forums, where there are regularly threads about sneaking yarn past their husbands. The only time I think it’s acceptable to do that is if the yarn is meant for a gift for said husband!

Sometimes he would ask me about the mystery project in the sidebar, but I’d always brush him off. He had a hint that it would be something for him, else I would have told him what it was. The funny thing is, for the past few months, I’ve been knitting almost entirely for other people. And every time I gave a knit gift to someone else, he’d make a joking comment along the lines of “Suuuure, knit for other people, never anything for your husband, I see how it is.” The hardest part was keeping his socks a secret for so long!

Among other patterns, the ribbing that continues on down the heel was an inspiration to me in designing both the Sibling Socks and then the Cakewalk Socks. Now that I’ve done that in two patterns, though, the next one will have to be different. I wouldn’t want to get into a ribbed heel rut!

So, finally, here are the Paraphernalias on Pirate-Husband’s feet, fitting almost perfectly. They’ve been a long time in the making, and a hard secret to keep, but they are done now, and given. Hooray!

You’ll still see Old Ben Kenobi on the sidebar. He wasn’t ready to be cut down by a lightsaber just yet; he’s returned as the face of the Sekrit Stardemon Gift, to be revealed at some point in the future…

Yesterday I was so tired when I got home that Pirate-Husband suggested that I should take a night off from knitting. “You’ve told me,” he said, “that when you’re tired you shouldn’t knit.”

“No,” I mumbled through a fog, “I can knit on something stockinette. I could, really. I could.” But I didn’t. He made dinner and we watched television with the cats draped across our laps, and then we both went to bed early. Not a productive evening, but a very comfortable one.

I’ve made progress on Michael’s Fleeps, but it will take a minor miracle to have them finished before I see him on Friday. There’s a lot to do tonight that isn’t knitting, like packing for Thanksgiving in New York, but maybe I can find a few moments. And I’m sure that Grandma won’t mind if I knit while we talk about everything under the sun. So, maybe! Fingers crossed.

Both of my socks-in-progress will be coming with me on the trip, too. Pirate-Husband pointed out, “We’ll be taking your car, there’s plenty of room for knitting,” and also commented “I know you love to start new projects, but I think you should finish the current socks first.” He is, of course, right on all three counts.

As for new projects, there is a LOT of baby knitting coming up. We will know the twins’ sexes tomorrow, so I’ll finally be able to buy the yarn for their sweaters. I am going to bring the KnitPicks catalog to New York with me, so that my sister-in-law can pick out exactly which colours she prefers. And my friend Gwen has just announced that she’s expecting her third, due in the end of May! I’m not yet sure what I’ll knit for her. Another sweater? A little toy? I’ll come up with something good.

Due Date …… Project
10/3 ………… Angie’s gifts
11/1 ………… Second Fleep, hand section
12/1 ………… Mom’s sock #2
12/1 ………… Dad’s hat
1/1 ….………. Gift for Janis’s baby boy
2/1 ………….. Mitten tops and thumb caps on Fleeps (almost done!)
2/1 ………….. Jacob Hat
3/1 ………….. Twins’ sweaters
4/15 ….……. Gift for Gwen’s baby

I have a conundrum:

I have a sock in progress (the Stripy Striped Kureyon Sock, sock) that I really, really don’t like working on. The yarn annoys me, and I can only work with it for so long before my hands hurt. And I have a sock in progress (the Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey sock) that doesn’t travel particularly well; the yarnball collapses and tangles.

I am going to New York for Thanksgiving weekend and I want to bring a sock with me, because I know there will be times that I will really, really want to knit (see: visiting Pirate-Husband’s mother on Saturday afternoon).

I do love starting new projects. (A lot!) But I also know that I have three baby sweaters and a colourwork hat to knit in my very near future, and so if I start a sock it will be a long time before it’s done, because I’ll have to put it aside to finish the deadline stuff. On the other hand, it could be the new Traveling Sock.

So, dear readers, what do I do? (I am wishy-washy.) Do I take the Stripy Sock, which hurts my hands but which will be fantabulous when it’s finally done? Do I bring the Wibbly-Wobbly sock, which I enjoy working on but the yarn tangles up? Or do I start something new, knowing that I won’t be finishing it any time soon?

And if I start something new, what should it be? The next few (plain-ish) socks in my queue are No-Purl, Unholey Monkeys, the Riverbed master pattern from Cat Bordhi’s book of crazy sockitectures, Wendy Johnson’s Toe-Up, Gusset Heel pattern, a stockinette sock for Pirate-Husband in tiger-stripes… or my own next sock design. (All of those links go to Ravelry pattern pages.) I want something I won’t have to think about while I work on it, so I can keep up a conversation without referring to a pattern in my lap.