The Knitting Pirate

I have a problem with Ravelry.

No, no, wait – before you run me out of town, hear me out! This is my problem: There are so many awesome patterns available that I’d never have known about, if it weren’t for Ravelry. And if I didn’t know about them, I wouldn’t want to knit them all. But now I do know about them, and I do want to knit them all.

For example, the Oktoberfest sock. I mean, really, it’s a sock kit with a pattern that makes your socks look like glasses of beer. The kit comes with beer-coloured yarn in three different flavours, and it even has a foamy white head. How absolutely awesome is this sock? Of course I want to knit this (psst, anyone who buys me gifts, I like the “Irish Red” colourway and I’d need the large size) but even if I got it now, it might be Oktoberfest 2013 before I get to wear the socks. That doesn’t stop me from wanting it every time I see the pattern come up in one of the banner ads. (Picture is from the Holiday Yarns website.)

Here’s one I just found today: a twelve inch doll, knitted in the round, with adorable foofy hair and even a little belly button. I bet I know a three and a half year old nieceling who might like a little doll so that she can play Mommy when her twin siblings are born next spring. But I also bet I know that I can’t take on any more time-based knitting commitments in the foreseeable future. Arrgh, if only I could take a month off work to sequester myself with yarn.

So much to knit… so little time!

I did not knit at all last night. Instead I had a good conversation with Pirate-Husband while we dragged a string around on the floor for the kittens to play with. It was 100%, absolutely, incredibly worth it. They are adorable little monsters. I hope they won’t be too mad at us next weekend when we drop them off at the vet’s to be fixed. They’ll be gone from Saturday through Monday, and the house will seem so empty without them!

Last week, Pirate-Husband and I went to visit my parents for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. My brother, sister-in-law, and the nieceling were also there, so we had nice festive family meals together. I was thrilled to hear the happy news that I’m going to be an aunt again in April! Yesterday, my brother called me and said that not only are they expecting Baby #2, but also Baby #3. That’s right, she’s pregnant with twins. I am so happy and excited for them!

Of course, I want to knit something for each baby. So I’ve gone back to my current projects with a frenzy! I want to get some things finished before I begin working on the baby knits. Last night I sat down and worked on Mom’s sock, and finished the first one before it got to be bedtime. My sock blockers are too big for her socks, so I refolded a wire hanger into a foot-shape. Not that the socks need blocking at all, but they’ll photograph much better if they’re stretched a little to show off the ribbing.

My sworn-brother Michael came to visit over Labor Day weekend, and I made him try on the Fleep-Tops that I’ve been working on for him. I’m glad I did, because they were still a few rounds too short for his hands. I’m going to add those rounds and the fingers before the next time I see him, so that he can try on a finished glove. I’ll have to determine where to put the mitten part while the gloves are on his hands, or they might end up in the wrong place. Customized knitwear for people who live far away, what fun – but they will be done in time for Winterlude, I swear it. I have to come up with some way of marking his Fleeps as separate from mine. Sure, they’re slightly larger, but they’re made of the same colour yarn, and they’ll be easy to confuse. Maybe I will put a little stripe into the mitten tops for him.

While my friends and neighbors at Pennsic said that I’d made amazing progress on Mom’s sock, I’m actually a little disappointed. I made it past the heel and through the gusset decreases, but I’d hoped to get the entire first sock finished while I was there. It was really just too hot to knit much of the time, and there were other things going on, too. That said, it’s coming out beautifully. There’s a little bit of pooling around the gusset, but I expected that. I love this yarn just as much as the first time I used it. I’m using almost exactly the same pattern; the only change I made was to take out four stitches, because Mom’s feet are just a little bit smaller.

My Pennsic-friend Alaric makes wood and stone drop spindles, although he himself doesn’t spin. Last year I bought one from him to give to Gaerwen, another SCA friend, who was receiving an award for her skills in spinning and natural dyeing. This year I came home with a twelve inch long, 25 gram, cherry spindle of my own. He had some which were all wood, and some with stone whorls, and some with double stone whorls that could be swapped in and out to get different weights. Every time I see him, I tell him to get an Etsy shop set up and then to advertise on Ravelry!

I really liked this particular spindle of the ones he had, and it fits well into my collection – now I have a 14g (from the Spanish Peacock) for really fine stuff, this 25g for medium, and a 34g spindle (the Cascade Little Si) for slightly heavier yarn. I generally like spinning at the wheel a lot better than using a drop spindle, but there are times when spindles are convenient. They’re certainly lighter to carry and take up less space, but also I’ve found that it’s easier to teach new spinners on a spindle.

I decided on Friday afternoon that even though I have unfinished socks on the needles, I really do like starting a new sock project on the first day of vacation. So I got to winding up the yarn for Mom’s socks. The first winding attempt came out too tightly, which always happens to me when I’m unwinding directly from the swift. I rewound it in the opposite direction, but then it came out too loosely. The third time was the charm. Maybe it’s a little tight, but since I’m going to knit with it right away, it doesn’t matter that much. The yarn-cake will lose a lot of tension after the first dozen yards are out of the centre of the ball.

“What is that noise?” Pirate-Husband called up the stairs on Friday night.. “Are you packing? We’re running late!”

I looked at the whirring swift and ball-winder. “Um… I’m… sort of packing! I’m winding yarn. Talk louder, I can’t hear you!”

“You’re winding yarn that’s coming with you, right?”

I yelled back, “It sure is! It’s the blue yarn for Mom’s socks! I just have to wind it up!”

“Well,” he shouted, “if it’s yarn that’s coming with you, that definitely counts as packing!”

Brownie points for Pirate-Husband!

I was winding this Cascade Heritage Paints in the “Isle of Skye” colourway. It’s going to become a pair of ribbed socks that’ll be both birthday and Chanukah presents for Mom (one sock for each gift!) I started knitting on Saturday morning while we were waiting for our campsite boundaries to be finalized, but helping to set up camp meant that I was only able to get about fifteen rounds of the cuff finished before we came home on Sunday afternoon. Besides, it was very hot and I was knitting very slowly.

I didn’t want to forget about the Time Traveler socks, which are about 65% done now, so I brought those with me too. I can switch off socks if I get tired of working with one. There will be plenty of down time in which I can knit, if the weather isn’t too brutal.

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!