The Knitting Pirate

Last night I was knitting on the Wibbly-Wobbly Jaywalker when I noticed my stitch count was off; I’d forgotten to make an increase two rounds back. Rather than unknit the three rounds to fix it, I took a deep breath, took up my crochet hook, and dropped down to the wrongness. It took a few moments for me to visualize the right way to pick up two stitches into one, but with some concentration I was able to figure it out. Hooray for intrepid knitting!

After a few more rounds of Jaywalking I decided to begin the second Stripey Striped Sock. It’s been a good six months, if not more, since I finished the first one; it’s probably time for me to grit my teeth, knit the second sock, and get it off my WIPs list. I don’t like the yarn at all, but I love how the colours play out, and I seem to remember that the first sock fit me perfectly. I’ll be very, very glad when it’s done, and I think the two matching/mismatched striped socks will look great together.

I’ve mastered the Figure-Eight toe, I think, since this is the fourth time in a row that I’ve gotten a good toe on the first try, without dropping a stitch or mis-counting. I knit the first two stripes last night, and the next two stripes will see the end of the toe and beginning of the foot, at which point the Second Stripey Sock will become my traveling companion. Whatever else I may think about the Kureyon Sock yarn, it travels much, much better than the softer Felici does!

This may look like the first of the Timey-Wimey Jaywalkers, but it’s actually the second. Yes, I knit the second sock before the first. Time can be wibbly that way. I’m exceedingly pleased that I’ll have just enough yarn to make the first sock match the second exactly; for a while I thought it wasn’t going to happen! It will come out with just a few yards to spare. I’ve cast on for the first sock right after I finished the second, and measured the tails together. They’re within two inches of each other, so I should have some very closely matching socks indeed.

Right now I’m not wearing socks at all; I’m wearing a pair of Vibram FiveFingers KSOs. They’re super-comfy shoes that are about as close as it gets to being barefoot. I love wearing them in the yard and climbing around on the boulders, and also out in public. Some people might think they’re horrifically ugly, but I’ve gotten more compliments on them than complaints. So even if I can’t wear handknit socks with them, they’re still pretty cool. I’d need to knit some really fine-gauge toesocks to wear under these, which is probably not going to happen.

And now, I’m off to work the ribbing of the second – no, the first – Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey Jaywalker.

I have a good excuse for not finishing the first of the Timey-Wimey socks this weekend. Actually, I have two good excuses and one sorry one! The sorry excuse is that I have been taking Celebrex for my ankle injury, and I feel like a zombie. If I sit down, I have a tendency to fall asleep. I did knit for a while and I’ve started the toe decreases. I think that I might have measured properly so that I’ll be able to have matching socks. It’ll be within a few yards, but I think it’s possible. Fingers crossed!

This is my first good excuse: in my efforts to stay awake, I went down into the garage with Pirate-Husband and worked on the next set of our wine bottle lanterns. We got the idea from Gerardot & Co. via Make.

We’d made one of these lanterns last fall, and had some ideas to improve on them for the next set. Our house is right in the middle of Virginia wine country, so we’re going to collect a variety of our favourites from local wineries. To keep the labels from peeling off, we’ve given the bottles a coating of clear polyurethane from a spray can. I drove some sturdy sticks into the ground, then slid the bottles onto them so that the bottoms could be sprayed as well. They’ll get a second coat some time this week. The humidity caused the spray to give a hazy finish, which I actually like better than if they’d come out clear.

The original instructions suggest using a cap to keep the wick dry when it’s not in use. Our first lantern lost its cap in less than a week, and has acquired a few inches of water underneath the oil in the lantern. To keep the cap from getting lost again, I got out “ye old chainmail kit” and made a chain of ten links. An eleventh link was soldered to the top of the cap, then hooked up to the rest. At the other end, the last link was put around the split ring hanger. The cap may still fall off, but at least now it won’t be lost! I discovered that I really enjoy soldering when I took a stained glass class, and this was a fun opportunity for me to play with molten metal again. Pirate-Husband deserves thanks for letting me do much of the soldering work, because I know he likes it too.

Unfortunately, the shiny copper-plated hardware didn’t weather as well as I would have liked. Real copper turns a beautiful green in the outdoors, but this stuff just sort of looked dirty. Rather than spray it with the polyurethane so that it stays shiny, we hit them with a flat black spray paint. Pirate-Husband is going to teach me dry-brushing techniques to make them look properly weathered, and then the clear polyurethane will seal in that look.

And this is my second good excuse: Sunday evening, just as I was settling in to finish the sock toe, we heard a rumbling from outside. Pirate-Husband’s former co-worker had somehow gotten his deuce and a half up into our driveway, and asked us if we wanted to go for a ride. There was really no thinking about it; I dropped the yarn and off we went on the loudest adventure ever! Even though I was wearing ear protection, I still feel slightly deafened. We drove to where the paved roads end and kept going, forded a small creek, saw a small spotted fawn, and had a wonderful time. I hope you don’t hold it against me that as a result I have no knitting to show today – and if you get the chance for an adventure like that, I hope you’ll also drop your yarn and run to meet it!

Two more stripes went onto the Timey-Wimey Jaywalkers last night, and I decided that it was time to try them on.

Eek.

Felici is slightly finer than what I think of as ‘standard’ sock yarn (Opal, Regia, Lang, etc.) and so the sock barely made it over my heel. It fit just fine once I’d tugged and pulled and cajoled it on. What a relief! A good blocking when the socks are done will help with that tightness, so I’m not worried about it at all.

I am a little worried about running out of yarn on the second sock. Because the two skeins that KnitPicks sent started on different colours, I’m going to have to cut out three stripes from the beginning of the second skein in order to have matching socks. I’ve cut it really, really close, and my fingers are crossed that my measurements are on the short side instead of the long side. KnitPicks has totally sold out of the Time Traveler colourway, so if I run out I will either have to beg for a length of the proper stripes or have a mismatched sock toe.

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’m just past the gusset decreases and into the foot of the first Timey-Wimey Jaywalker, and very near the toe of the second Sibling Sock, so I’ve swapped them out: the Jaywalkers are going to become my traveling sock and I’m cranking away on the Sibling sock right now, hoping to finish it (and the pair!) tonight. Pirate-Husband and I are going to be at a party from tomorrow morning into Monday afternoon, so I should be able to put a few more inches onto the Jaywalkers then. One of the goals of the gathering is to fell three large trees, something I’m just not physically up to right now, so I plan to knit and watch stronger people swing axes and wield chainsaws.

The math to convert my Fleep-Tops to a larger size for Michael was giving me fits. I mis-read my notes, then I mis-judged, and then I mis-calculated, but eventually figured out what to do. The numbers should all be right now, but there’s only so far I can go before I’ll want him to try them on for perfect sizing. Once I have the first one done, the second will be much faster.

Happy news: I just found out that my friend Angie is pregnant with her first! She’s only seven weeks along, but I’m already planning out what to knit for her. I ordered the yarn from WEBS this morning, and downloaded some patterns from Ravelry. Knitting babyclothes is total instant gratification!

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.)

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.

Last night I took the new Trekking Ribbed Sock to SnB, and I stitched while I bitched and then suddenly realized that I’d knitted where I should have purled. Drat. Intrepid knitter that I am, I dropped the stitch and tried to pick it up the right way. Except I dropped it again. And again. Lissa took the sock from me and got all the stitches back on the needle, then Gwen got them all turned around the right way, and now I have purls where there should be purls, thanks to the wonderful women I knit with on Wednesdays.

When I came home I got to work on the Jaywalker toe. I knit as fast as I could, but it got to be bedtime and I was still only about halfway through the toe. Am I a slow knitter, or does time go faster when it’s almost bedtime? Anyway, tonight I sat down with determination and I have finished! my! socks! They fit great, though as is usual for Jaywalkers, they’re a little hard to get on. I know they’ll break in just fine.

Something else from last night – Lissa told me I was the most efficient knitter she’d ever seen. Well, how about that? I guess I do knit with an economy of motion. Not only that, but she volunteered to teach me to spin on one of her wheels! That’s the coolest thing ever. I am so excited! (There may be a wheel in my future. It might be my birthday present. I’m not thinking about that yet. It’s too far ahead and who knows what might happen between now and then.)

So tomorrow, the Trekking Ribbed Sock and I are off to the airport, where it will keep me calm as I wait for my flight, which is almost certain to be delayed. I hope the TSA doesn’t steal my needles; this is the first time I’ll be trying to bring aluminum needles on a plane.

A day of steady sock-knitting has gotten me to within a few inches of the toe. My goal is to have it done before Friday evening, so that I can have a Whole New Sock cast on for airport knitting. Hopefully the airline won’t have a problem with five size 0 aluminum DPNs!

Now what I have to do is decide on color. I’ve already decided to go with the Trekking XXL, and I’ve already picked a ribbing pattern, but I have two colorways (66 and 90) and choosing between them is difficult! I’m leaning towards the 90, which is deserty browns with a little bit of blue thrown in. 66 is dark greens, purples, navy and burgundy. Pirate-Husband says the brown one will go with more of my clothes, so I think that’s going to be the winner this time. I’ve taken it out and have it on my desk to remind me that if I hurry with the Jaywalker, I could be casting on for a new sock (and wearing new socks, too) in just a few days!

In spinning news, I’m eyeing wheels and drum carders. What a dangerously costly hobby this is turning out to be.