The Knitting Pirate

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

AND ALSO: five US 0/2mm double-point needles and a stitch marker.

Sibling Socks pattern – pdf format

Sibling Socks page on Ravelry.com

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.

I came home from the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival with $40 still in my pocket, but I knew that I wasn’t done shopping. I’d kept my eyes open on Saturday for the perfect sock yarn for Mom, and hadn’t found it – so I ordered the Cascade Heritage Paints from WEBS in the Isle of Skye colourway. It’s the perfect bluesy colours for her, with just enough variegation to be interesting but not enough to stripe or pool. Admittedly, I didn’t look very hard for her yarn at the festival, because I was kind of set on getting this brand. I’ve knit with it before and I trust it to be good. While I’m willing to take risks on my own socks, I’m hesitant to do so when I’m making a gift for someone else. Especially when that someone else is a little bit skeptical about hand-knit socks in the first place. (It’s sad that my LYS didn’t have the colourway I wanted in stock; it’s even sadder that it cost the same to order it from WEBS even with the shipping. Why is the yarn marked up $3.00 at the local store? I want to shop locally, but sometimes money matters.)

Then I went over to KnitPicks to check out the new colourways of their Felici sock yarn, and for the first time, one called out to me and *needed to be mine*. The name of the colourway is “Time Traveler”. I’ve been catching up on back episodes of Doctor Who (why I haven’t watched it before is a mystery to me) and I just had to have these socks. The description makes them even better:

Wear these brightly striped socks whether you are going to the office or traveling through time and space. Time Traveler is a colorful mix of purple, tan, red, gold, ivory, and gray stripes. While you can knit some really really long socks, this colorway will not create socks that are larger on the inside than they appear on the outside.

Even better than the description, my sister the Ninja has bought the same yarn and we’re going to have matching socks! She says the colours are perfect, and she should know, ’cause she’s working on one of those extra-long stripey scarves right now. We’ve decided to both knit Jaywalkers, because then the stripes will be sort of straight (like the scarf) and yet wibbly-wobbly at the same time. This is going to be awesome.

As long as I was already shopping at KnitPicks, I bought a set of sock blockers (in large, for my long feet). I’ve been wanting them for a while, primarily for taking pictures of finished socks. It’s not always easy to get good pictures of one’s own feet!

(a note: the two pictures of yarn are from the WEBS and KnitPicks sites, respectively.)

Did I really make plans to be out of town on the same weekend as the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival? That’s what I get for not looking at my calendar. Boy, did I feel stupid when I realized my mistake. Fortunately, Amtrak doesn’t charge change fees, and I am able to move my trip to the following weekendweekend before (the following weekend is Mothers Day, and I can’t miss that either!) Whew!

Despite not remembering when it is, I’m pretty excited about MDSW. Like last year, I plan to buy mostly fibre – the hand-dyed stuff that I love to touch before deciding to buy. I’m going to help a friend look for her first drop spindle and some fibre so I can teach her to spin. I’m *not* going to buy anything that hasn’t already been washed. I haven’t gotten around to carding any of the solid-coloured stuff that I bought last year, so I don’t think I need more of those. I meant to bring the carder out over the weekend, but it didn’t quite work out. I *am* going to buy a braid of fibre in colours that I don’t usually go for, and something in a semi-solid, and maybe a sort of fibre that I haven’t yet tried – perhaps a blend that will spin into a tweedy yarn.

If I see the perfect sock yarn for my mom, I’ll pick it up; otherwise I’m going to have to order from WEBS as my local yarn store doesn’t have the colourway and wasn’t very forthcoming about their ability to order it in for me. I was a little disappointed at the hedging about ordering, and the implication that I’d have to buy a full bag of the yarn when all I need is one skein. (But ordering from WEBS is dangerous! I never want to get just one thing; I always want to get up to a $60 order so that I can have the 20% discount!)

Like so many people I know, I am a procrastinator. Getting started is the hardest part of a project for me. Once I get going, the momentum will keep me working for a while. The other day I was linked to an amazing post from Make Great Stuff titled Getting Jump Started, and I thought it would be a great thing to try.

Sometimes I’m hesitant to start working on a project because I don’t think that I have enough time to really get into it. But most of my hobbies are cumulative, in that I don’t have to work in big chunks at a time. If I read a chapter a night, I’ll finish the book eventually. If I practice for twenty minutes a day, I’ll actually improve faster than if I spend two and a half hours at it once a week. And if I knit a few rows whenever I have some down time, I’ll have new socks sooner than if I only pick up the knitting when I have a lot of time free.

But twenty minutes… I have lots of twenty minuteses. Last night I had an hour free with nothing planned – I had three blocks of twenty minutes! Suddenly I felt as if I could do three things instead of none! So I read two chapters of my book, played guitar for a little bit, and finished the heel flap and turn on the second Sibling Sock (this bit took more than twenty minutes, but that’s kind of the point; you don’t have to stop working just because the timer goes off). Tonight I’ll pick up the stitches for the gusset and work on the decreases, and pretty soon I’ll be able to take the sock along with me again. I tend to leave even the simplest socks-in-progress at home when I’m at a section that requires counting (like a heel flap) or concentration (like a heel turn). Now that my wrists are feeling better and the sock will soon be past the heel, I can bring it out in public.

I did have some trouble with the heel turn numbers until I found where I’d scribbled notes for new numbers on the back of the pattern. Before I publish this, I will either have to knit sample heels in both sizes to check that I’ve got it right, or I will have to recruit some test knitters. I’m excited to be preparing a second pattern to share with the world! When I’ve finished the pair, I might treat myself to a pair of nice sock blockers so that I can take better pictures of them.

For the curious or potentially-interested, the Sibling Socks are knit with Trekking XXL on size 0 needles at 45 stitches/4 inches. There seems to be a lack of free fine-gauge sock patterns out there, and I hope this pattern will help fill that gap.

Drumroll, please.

And now, on center stage, the Knitting Pirate is pleased to present, in their debut appearance… HANDSPUN SOCKS!

410 yards of two-ply yarn, spun from 4.4 ounces of BFL from FreckleFaceFibers on Etsy, became this pair of toe-up, short-row-heel, socks for myself! I started them in the end of July, 2009, when Janis and I challenged each other not to just spin yarn, but to actually knit with it, too. We both decided on socks. I decided to go with toe-up, because I didn’t know how far the yarn would go, but I knew I wanted to get as much out of it as I could. I used Wendy’s Generic Toe-Up Sock Pattern, substituting a figure-eight toe.

One of the neat things about toe-up socks is that there’s really no need for a gauge swatch; you can just use the toe as a swatch. The yarn seemed thinner than most commercial sock yarns I’ve knit with, so I decided to use size 0 needles. I started with my usual sixteen-loop toe, knit until I thought it fit my foot, realized that it was too large, and horrified my audience by nonchalantly ripping it out and starting over. “But you’ve knit so much already!” they said. “Isn’t it frustrating to have to begin again?” I explained that I’d rather lose an hour or so of knitting, than put in the time it takes to knit the entire pair and end up with socks that don’t fit. It’s possible that my horrified audience didn’t entirely understand.

(Lesson learned: When using a toe-up toe as a swatch, work the increases only to the point where the toe fits over your first four toes. You can leave the pinky out, it’s okay. She won’t mind, because in the end the socks will fit much, much more snugly around your foot.)

The socks do fit perfectly, thank goodness. They are a little tight to get on, but once I have them in place they fit me like, well, like socks. No bagging around the ankles, no sagging around the legs, and no extra material around the foot. I hope they wear as well as they fit!

My mom had surgery this week, and I wasn’t able to be there the day of it – so I went to visit her as soon as she got home and was up for visitors. She seems to be doing pretty well, all things considered. We sat and chatted while I worked on the Handspun Sock, and she showed me a gorgeous scarf that her friend knit for her as a long-distance hug. Not just any friend, but her friend from college who taught her to knit in the first place, without whom I wouldn’t be knitting now! It’s made up of a bunch of different yarns from her stash, in a bunch of different colourways, which blend together beautifully to make something which is very much Mom’s style.

I don’t have a picture of the scarf, but I do have this picture of the nieceling wearing the Bunny Sweater that Mom knit for her! The bunny is still missing a pompom tail, but that’s all right. And now that Mom’s done knitting the kid-size sweater, she’s thinking of knitting one for herself. Does anyone have any suggestions for a structured cardigan or coat that might work? Something suitable for office-wear?

Then Mom totally made my day by asking for a pair of socks to wear with blue jeans, although in the past she’s said that she wasn’t interested in them as she tends to wear very thin nylon socks. But the gloves I made her, and the scarf from her friend, are working to change her mind. Not to mention Pirate-Husband, who chimed in to say that he’d been skeptical about handknit socks until he got a pair, and now he is all about the socks. I would be thrilled to make socks for my mom! I just need a few measurements, I told her, and then I will surprise her with when she gets the finished pair. This is going to be fun! Hey Mom, do you want plain socks? Stripey socks? Socks with a fancy stitch pattern?

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.