Knits as they are known : Pillar Socks

The other day, it got cold and I had to wear socks.  Yes, where I live it is possible to avoid wearing socks until December. Yes, I still knit wool socks.  It's a contradiction, I know, but if I keep knitting, and keep living here, I could possibly knit enough socks so I never have to wear a store bought pair again.* It's a life goal.  Aim high I say.  Anyways, I digress.  It was cold. I wore socks.  Specifically, I wore the first pair of socks I ever knit in the round.  More specifically, I wore a hand knit pair of socks that are more than a decade old.  They still fit, they still bring me joy. I will not be Kondo-ing  them away anytime soon.

It got me thinking about the destiny of all the things we knit. We knitters of the Internet love to knit things and love to show them off.  We carefully pose a freshly knit and perfectly blocked FO to show it (and our skills) off to the world. Sometimes we tell a little story about why we knit it, what inspired us, the tribulations we went through while doing it, etc.  We follow trends, and sometimes we all knit the same thing.  Patterns come and go. More recent converts to the knitting world may not even know the February lady sweater craze of 2008, or the monkeys, oh the monkeys, and how can we ever forget the clapotis Seriously, 22000+ projects and I'm still not even sure how to say that word out loud.

Pretty knits are shown off, and pressed into to service by their new owners, and forgotten to time. When was  the last time you saw a picture of handknit socks years after they came off the needles? Well today I remedy this.  I'm going to try my best to start documenting,  the full life of my knits.  How do they wear? how do they work? how do they wash?  Where they really worth what was put into them? It is these burning issues, understudied in the knittingverse, that I will attempt to address. 

So in that spirit, here are the socks I wore today:

 

 And here they are when I first knit them (and blogged them):

Pattern: Pillars by Lisa Stichweh
Yarn: Knitpicks Stroll Tonal, I think the color was called Sunflower. 
Knit 2011/2012: I knit these mostly on airplanes.  I don't remember finishing, but I do remember starting them on a trip to Seattle.

4 years of service and they have held up well.  I was pleasantly surprised with the relatively in-expensive yarn in both the knitting and wearing process.  They still fit, they are still soft and comfy, the go through the wash fairly regularly.  I've been mostly good about keeping them out of the dryer, but I know they've been through at least a couple of times.  There is always some fuzz on them, but it makes them all the more beautiful to me.    Good pattern, great yarn, happy results. 

*I might still buy happy socks, because they are pretty damn comfy. Comfy and cotton. 

A FO Friday

Twas the day after Thanksgiving, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring....

Yeah, right.  I have a three year old boy.  Someone is always stirring in this house!  Today it was a lot of Playmobil pirates, but I did manage to finish off two items and get them on the blocking board.

The first is the beautiful Silverwing Shawl by Baroque Purls.

Here is is straight off the needles, it's drying now, so it will get a proper debut sometime later. 

I knit this because I needed a new project and we were flying to the beach the next day. The design is inspired by Amy van de Laar's hometown of Whakatane, New Zealand, and the pūkeko birds she sees there.That region of New Zealand was one of the places and things I was busy with in the long hiatus of the blog, so it struck me as appropriate.

I followed the pattern as written, except for the bind-off.  It was coming out too tight, so I switched to a stretchy one. I loved everything about this knit, except the yarn.  The Numma Numma Panna Sock was a sale purchase from Eat.Sleep.Knit earlier this year.  It was to get me to another planet in this year's yarn-a-thon. The color is beautiful, but it didn't play well with my knitpicks harmony  rainbow wooden needles - think squeaky yarn - ewww.  An "emergency" trip to the yarn store in St. Petersburg was necessary to find some Chiaogoo's.  Hubs was kind enough to indulge me.  There may also have been some minor stash enhancement.

FO Friday

It's done!  Well, it has been done for a while, but I've been too lazy to take pictures.

Here she is. A whale of a tale!

This is my first completed project from New England Knits, which my sister gave me for Christmas to remind me of home and I want to knit everything from it!.

I had one ball of the navy and one ball of the white that I had purchased to try out for a different project, but decided it wasn't right for that.  It's knitpicks Palette.  The teal is a little - a very little - bit of Online Supersock 100 leftover from my Pomatomus.  I didn't have a fourth color like the pattern calls for so I just did a little row of navy at the edge of the chevrons.  Looks great, but it meant that there were a couple of rows that had all three colors floating around, which was a bit of an annoyance.

When it was done, it wasn't quite as floppy as I wanted, but blocking it flopped out a bit more and in the end I'm quite happy with it.  Of course it was 80 degrees here today, so it will be a while before the whales see the light of day again!

FO Friday

I didn't do much Christmas knitting this year, but I was inspired to make one garment for my sister.  When I was home over fall break it was a bit chillier than she had expected and she borrowed my Pteryla shawl one day, she really liked its size and weight.  Then I got that sock yarn book, then I uncovered some yarn purchases I made over the summer and it seemed the fates aligned.

This yarn:



desperately wanted to be this shawl:



for my kid sister, who always had a thing for the sparkle.

FO Friday

Did I mention I went to SAFF this year?  Hub was nice and took me there, we had a lovely day trip that included fall colors, yarn and antiques.  It wasn't as big or diverse as Rhinebeck, but I did find a few unique yarns that were new to me.  One of which was a sock yarn called Cool Wool Sock, from Carriage House Woolens, which I can only assume is a very small company because that webpage seems to work only intermittently.

I was intrigued by this particular yarn because it was a mix of Wool and Coolmax.   I even looked it up on the web browser on my phone before purchasing since I had never heard of it.  What got me about it was that my mom loves the socks I make for her, but sometimes says that the warm woolies are a little too warm.  I thought this might make a pair that could be a little more versatile for her.

Combined with my signed copy of One-Skein Sock Yarn Wonders*  I was off to the races with a new pair of socks.

I started them at a knit night and they went pretty quickly.  I brought them with me on my field trip in November and turned the first heel when I visited my old knit night.  Unfortunately I was in auto-pilot mode and didn't really read the pattern.  The gusset decreases are not standard and I tried to fudge it, but it just wasn't working, so I had to rip back all the way to the leg again and start over with the heel flap.  At this point they went into time-out for a while, to be picked up again shortly before the holidays when I was determined to finish them for Mom's birthday (Christmas Eve).  I finished the first one at a knit night and was terribly disappointed to try it on and discover that it was really tight at the ankle.  So it just got thrown in the suitcase.  I brought it home and Mom tried it on on her birthday and said it fit her just fine.  So I finished them up on the two post-Christmas snow days we had in New England and left them there with her.  At last report, she loves them!

Pattern: Eyelet and Feather Socks by Anne McClure in the above mentioned book
Needles: US size 1.5 (2.5mm) Susanne's ebony needles (mad love for these)
Yarn: Carriage House Woolens Cool Sock

* I highly recommend this series of books.  I have the original, the designer and the sock yarn versions and I've used them extensively.

FO Friday

Remember this Rhinebeck yarn:



Well in just 8 weeks it became this:

Pattern: Drops 119-25 (Terribly long pattern name here)
Yarn: Bartlett Shetland Sport Cone in color dark jade heather - Probably a little more than half the cone. I think there is enough left for another sweater!
Size: Modified Large. I followed the size large pattern, but after I went 4 inches past the underarms I realized it was way too big, so I ripped back and didn't cast on any of the underarm stitches.  This required some changes to the sleeves which ended up being somewhere between the medium and large size at the start and decreased down to the medium.
Needles: Awesome Ninja needles size 4.

Enter the sock

Near the end of the summer, hub flew back to take care of all our stuff and there was some confusion on his flights. The first time we were quite lucky that I had come into the airport with him because he had to come back with me and stay an extra few days.  The second time I dropped him off, and I was ~10 miles away from the airport when he called to say he wasn't entirely sure if he had a seat on the plane.  So I pulled into the nearest yarn shop to kill some time.  A few hours later he was in the air, and I was on my way to a concert with a good friend and a new pair of socks on a new pair of needles.  Sometimes I have no self restraint.

In any case, they became my traveling companion socks and were finished up on my plane ride home to visit my family and go to Rhinebeck.



The yarn is from libertyfibers an independant dyer who sells on etsy and it was very soft and squishy to knit with.

I'm really quite happy with them, and it is just becoming sock weather here in the south so I'm happy to have a new pair to wear.

petryla

She's done. I'll explain how some other time, but depending on the weather she might make an appearnce at Rhinebeck tommorrow.

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we interrupt this pity fest

Let's take a break from the seriousness for a moment (I'll finish the story this time, let's just take a break!)

The endpapers started a bit of a craze around here. This hat had been on my radar for a very long time. Since, 2007, when Adrian of HelloYarn knit a couple. But, my fairisle skills were too low for it, then the mitts became unearthed and I was like a madwomen. Ta-da:

It took me two day to knit and I'm totally in love with it. I have a bunch of knitpicks merino style lying around after a failed attempt to find a color that matched something else, and these two colors go well together. It was nice to work with.

The pattern is pretty well written, but I did mod it a little. Several people have complained about how tall the hat was if knit as written. A common mod is to just remove the first certain number of rows (22 I think) of the pattern. But, that makes the bottom of the hat start mid-way through one of the "diamonds", not at the center of one as written, which I don't really like. I have a thing for symmetry. So, I thought that maybe if I just eliminated the stripe at the start, that it would shorten the pattern enough. I didn't have a third color of yarn anyways.

As I got into it, I realized that it was still going to be too tall. So I re-arragend the decreases to produce what you see here. That made the had just slightly too short. It covered my ears, but would pop off my head. So, I picked up stitches from the bottom, knit 7 rows of corrugated ribbing and another braid and voila. A perfect fit. LOVE!* There might, just might be matching mittens on the needles as well ;)

*seriously, I wore it around the house for days I was so damn proud of myself.

I can knit fair isle!!!!

This is just so much fun. I can't frickn believe it! I have no idea why these sat unfinished on the needles for 3 years. Yes, you read that right: 3 years.

Here's the quick and dirty story. I started them in 2007, they were going pretty well, I was somewhere midway in the thumb gusset on the first mitt and then they just sat. And sat. And sat. When we moved last year I frogged all of the hibernating works in progress, but just couldn't bring myself to rip these. Hubby wouldn't let me either. Since then I haven't seen them, they were packed away in a box somewhere. A few weeks ago we came home from the faculty club a bit early on a Friday night, too late to watch a movie, but too early to go to bed. I didn't really have anything on the needles that met that middle of the road thought level requirement...or so I thought. I started putzing around the craft room and out popped the endpapers. Two weeks later and they were done. I was like an addict, I couldn't put them down, I was better at it then I remembered and I just zoomed along.

Pattern: Endpaper Mitts from Eunny Jang
Yarn: Louet Gems Pearl, one skein each Sandelwood and Teal, purchased from Kpixie.com
Needles: US size 2 dpns for body, size 1s for trim
Mods: Well. I added a row at each top and thumb cuff and I think that I knit the lower cuff on size 2 rather than the 1s called for in the pattern. At least that's what I did on the second one. I don't know what I did on the first one, but I can't notice a difference.

In summary. LOVE! Except I'm not a big fan of the fake purl seam thing, annoying to work and sort of pointless in my opinion.

This has created a bit of a fair isle frenzy here so there will be more to come :)

Manly Mitts - Part 2 - The Knitting

I really enjoy knitting for Hub. He always asks about how it's going, when will it be done and compliments it along the way, and sometimes I can even convince him to help me weave in the ends ;) So, the mitt request made me drop all other WIPs and go stash diving. It also was a great chance to use my new Kollage Square DPNs.

I pulled out all my "manly" sock weight yarn, and let him pick. His very discerning eye picked out some limited edition Neighborhood Fiber Company merino cashmere blend from when I was in the sock club in 2008 colorway "Raspberry Truffle":

I was pretty excited, but this yarn is luscious, but too soft wearing for socks, but at a tight gauge probably just right for mitts.

Since his request was for half fingers I also had to go pattern hunting. There are many patterns out there, but I found this one to be what I wanted in sock yarn weight so I went with it. It was also free and easy to resize for a man size hand.




Off I went to knit night and cast on. I did 74 stitches and followed the pattern exactly, having 4 extra stitches for each finger. It was a quick and enjoyable knit. Did I mention that the yarn was luscious?




Hub likes them:

All in all they were good, but a tad loose, next time I'd go with only 70 stitches for a man's size. I have about half the ball of yarn leftover, which means I could make another pair. I toyed with the idea of making a pair for my self. The yarn is soooo nice. But ultimately decided that I should keep the yarn safe and sound for when he loses one of them. The pattern is fun to knit, however and the perfect mental level for knit night, so another pair is in the works in the proper lady size.

My Beau

Every year, my beau, the best husband ever, gets a sweater. He wears them, sometimes, every day. He appreciation and pride for the hand knits makes the process a joy for me. He helps me pick the yarn, the pattern and gets all excited whenever he sees me working on it. I love knitting for him. 2009 was no different, even though it was stretched to the very end of the year, he got a sweater.

He has a Cambridge Jacket, and a Cobblestone (mine), and of the two he prefers the zip up style of the jacket, so he requested his next sweater be of that style. It really is more versatile for southern life, where wool sweaters are not required in the same way as they are up north. He also went through my books and requested this for his next sweater. Those two requests being completely opposite, required some knit-mods on my part. I was feeling brave so I decided I was up to the task.

The modified Beau on my beau.

Basically, I followed the pattern for size small, but just knit the front in two pieces, adding an extra stitch at the center front (for each side), which I knit on the right side and slipped on the left side to form a nice edge where the zipper would go. Then I eliminated the bind-offs where the placket was supposed to be and incorporated those extra decreases into the neck shaping. Everything else was just the same as the pattern. There was a little ripping and fixing in the neck area, but mostly that's because I wasn't paying attention.

To put in the zipper, I followed Grumperina's directions, and added a striped grosgrain ribbon to make it look finished. I thought about putting it in the sewing machine, but in the end I chickened out on that. It's time consuming to do all that hand finishing, but well worth it.

Overall, I'm pleased with it. I think it's a little snug in the shoulders, which is something I'll have to address for the 2010 sweater, but he's happy and it's been well worn so far.

Pattern: Beau from Rowan Vintage Knits zippified.
Yarn: Filatura Lanarota Chaco, purchased at Rhinebeck in 2007. It's a standard worsted 100% wool (just under 6 balls, I still have 4 more left)
Needles: US size 5 and 7 from knitpicks harmony interchangeables (love!)
Zipper purchased from zipperstop to get the correct length.

Baby Knitting (not for me)

So now that we've see all the '09 sock fails. Let's talk about some successes.

My friend Ellen, who you've heard about before*, had a baby. A really cute baby. Now, we know the baby knitting rules. If you were in the wedding party, baby gets a gift. If not, baby maybe gets a gift. Ellen falls into the former of these two categories, so a gift was happening.

Since I'm notorious for taking longer than necessary to knit things, I typically start to plan these things from the moment the news is first announced, and finish them two months after the baby arrives. This time was no different. I bought the yarn in Maine this summer. Cast on just about the same time little Shelby arrived (actually hours before I received the email in some creepy psychic sort of way), finished just before Christmas, and sent it off in the mail on New Year's Eve.

Ellen, in classic style, sent a hardcopy photo of Shelby in her sweater, which arrived back here by January 8th. If we were TV sitcom roomates, she'd be the smart on-the-ball one, and I'd be the one with the best intentions who can't quite get it all together. Pretty much living together was just like that. :)

The knitter's among you will recognize this as Elizabeth Zimmerman's iconic Baby Surprise Jacket. One of which I have knitted before. Same comments, the women is brilliant. The pattern is fun. It must be for me to have knit it twice.

The yarn is a rare gem, purchased in a small shop in Bar Harbor, ME, which had just recently opened. It's called Superstar, by a company called Starcroft fibers. It's superwash, so it's baby friendly. I bought it on a day off from our busy field season. The deal was, I'd give the grad students a day to visit the National Park, but they had to take me to the yarn store! Since then I haven't been able to find a website for the store, but it's right downtown and hard to miss.

I used almost all of two balls (one in teal and one in nutmeg), on size 4 needles. The colors at the shop were limited in the gender neutral sense, I thought this combo would work. I used a random striping pattern, first by flipping a coin, then by making a random list in excel. I picked up stitches around the neck and did a picot bind-off to make it just a little girlie, since by then we knew she was a she. The buttons were a happy coincidence from my button stash. Nothing fancy, just shell buttons available at most craft stores, but they picked up the yarn colors nicely. All in all a classic, cute, squishy BSJ!

* No, the afghan is not done, but we are up to 26 of the 99 squares. Coming out with that fact is making me think that it needs to be next on the finish it up list.

The cankle socks

The final sock fail of 2009.

The cankle socks.

I don't mean to be mean in any way. The socks just look like they have no ankles, so in our house they have been dubbed the cankle socks. Really, they are the Butterflies and Berries Socks from a long-ago purchased kit. This is some of the first "real" sock yarn I purchased. Back when I was crocheting socks rather than knitting them. Back when I was hording yarn for some reason. Back before the blog was anonymous and went under a different name. Back in 2005 to be exact. As one of my knitting friends is fond of saying, "yarn is like wine, you need to age it". Well, this was good and aged.

I bought the yarn with the intentions of crocheting some socks for myself, it was on sale (cheaper than it's listed now I'm sure) and I figured that the pattern was just something I'd keep or pass onto a friend who did knit socks. Well, I conquered DPNs and have long abandoned crocheted socks*.

Technically, there is nothing wrong with these socks. They are a really fun knit, and the yarn is very nice. The pattern is easy enough to follow, memorize, etc. Everything I'm looking for in a sock.

Here's the but you all knew was coming: The foot portion is just too large in circumference. Hence the cankle designation. The pattern calls for size 2 dpns. I usually knit socks on a size 1 or smaller. For this design, the stranded butterfly stitch doesn't have the give that a normal knitted fabric would have, actually it pulls in some, so going up a needle size is prudent. It all works out fine on the calf portion. But keeping with the larger size on the eyelet portion is a mistake. Eyelets are lace and make a knit fabric stretch even more than it would normally. So we have the following formula:

normal knitting + extra eyelet stretch + bigger needles = cankles [eqn.1]

To correct this, I would perform a simple modification:

normal knitting + extra eyelet stretch + smaller needles = good fit [eqn 2]

You see, by a simple change of needle size we solve the problem. Theoretically, that is, I have not tested this theory on a second pair of socks. Although I have enough yarn leftover that I just might. I would simply just switch to smaller needles before the heel flap portion and I think all would be well.

In any case, here are the stats.

Pattern: Butterflies and Berries Socks by Debbie O'Neill available from The Knitter as a kit.
Yarn: Mountain Colors Bearfoot in Wild Raspberry. I have alot leftover. I like the yarn. It shed some color in blocking. The mohair content gives it a little fuzz that I enjoy.
Needles: size 2 bamboo dpns
Mods: I found the little shell rib to be pretty, but annoying to work, so I only did 3 repeats of it instead of the five. Similarly I reduced the number of pattern repeats in the ankle portion. I did 6 instead of 8. Also in the foot, fewer reps because I have small feet, which also required I eliminate some rows in the toe.

The end result is some warm and fuzzy house socks, which was nice since we had a freeze here and it was unpleasantly cold.

Like I said, 2009 was a bad year for socks.

*For making, not wearing that is. Hub has a vintage '05 on his feet right now. They hold up let me tell you.

The pick me up scarf

Here's a quickie little knit-update.

Way back when. I took a sad trip to the yarn store and was seduced by that gorgeous bright alpaca. When it made it's blog debut, it had been a few rows of the lace ribbon scarf, from Knitty. Well it turns out that that pattern isn't so great for following in a crowded airport, and by the time I got home, it was completely flubbed up. The poor yarn went through 3 more attempts to become scarves in the intervening months. I think one was from Knitting New Scarves, I have a vague recollection that one was My So Called Scarf, one was something I made up. Nothing was really making me completely happy, there was pooling, blah blah. Finally before the move last year, it too was completely frogged and the poor yarn was put back in the stash.

A month or so after the move, I was feeling the need for the bright colors again and I rewound the ball, so all that kinky yarn would be at the end and I sat down determined to make it work. Same needles, different pattern and voila:

It took most of a year, knitting a few rows here and there when I needed to feel a little cheery. Sometimes it came to knit night when there was nothing else easy enough to work while chatting and sometime last fall it was done, and pressed right into service. I call it the pick me up scarf. It is soft and bright and everything the yarn promised it would be.

If you have some yarn that needs to be something like this here's what to do:

Cast on 33 stitches.

Row 1: K3, K2, *yo, sl 1, k2tog, psso, yo, k1; rep from * to last four stitches, K1, slip 3 stitches purlwise wyif.

Row 2: K3, purl to last three stitches, slip 3 stitches purlwise wyif.

Row 3: K3, K2tog, yo, k1, *yo, sl 1, k2tog, psso, yo, k1; rep from * to last 6 stitches, yo, sl 1, psso, k1, slip 3 stitches purlwise wyif

Row 4: K3, purl to last three stitches, slip 3 stitches purlwise wyif.

Rep these 4 rows until you run out of yarn. Bind off, wet block and enjoy.

That's it, easy peasy.

Let me know if you make one, or have troubles with the pattern!

Navy Toes the Line

Last Fall (2008). I started a pair of socks for Hub. He likes socks and has unlimited patience when it comes to my long-time projects.

This is what they looked like circa October 2008.

I know the first one was finished before the end of 2008 as I alluded to an unfinished pair in my sock wrap up. Why the second one sat for so long I don't really know. For a while it was buried in the bottom of my knit-night knitting bag, below the Anastasia's and a Clapotis (Yes, I tried again. Don't ask.) Then it moved into the house for a while and just mocked me. It came to Germany in October, in the car to New Orleans in November, to Texas in November, and finally a finishing kick took over when I was sick mid-December.

Behold the shooting sock. Really that's it's name.

Pattern: Gentleman's Shooting Stockings with Fluted Pattern by Nancy Bush from Knitting Vintage Socks. My favorite sock book ever, this is my 4th pattern from it.
Yarn: Regia 4-ply sock. Color 1042, 2 balls, plus a little Brown Sheep Wildfoote).
Needles: US size 0 (maybe that's why they took so long!)

The pattern has good calf shaping and the little triangles continue down the heel flap. That is really the only difficult part of the whole thing. Other than that it's a classic well-written fun to knit pattern.

But wait, a successful pair of socks in 2009??? Wrong. Look a little closer:

Notice anything? That's right, toe number 2 is a different color. I ran out of yarn with 14 rounds left. 14 blipping rounds. The first sock took exactly one ball. The second one took some extra Brown Sheep Wildefoote that came from deep in the sock yarn leftovers bucket. There isn't a noticeable difference in size, so I don't think it was a gauge issue, but in a year of socks like last one, who knows.

Oh well, hub is happy and it feels good to wipe this one off the WIP list.

Twisted Sister

So as you probably figured, there were no socks for Shelly's birthday. I was, however, determined to knit her some socks this year. So I ordered some yarn*.

Enter, Pomatomus, and the wonderful Online Supersocke 100. Ahh, finally a sock yarn like a sock yarn should be, soft, sturdy, perfect gauge, classic. This is going to be great. Well, once I get past this twisted rib cuff. It is a little annoying, but it looks nice and it's just the cuff.....

WRONG! Those damn twisted stitches are what make the pattern pop so nicely, and they run the WHOLE LENGTH OF THE SOCK, even on the heel flap!

Oh well, I'm flying alot for the summer, the pattern has a bit of a rhythm to it. I'll suck it up, because they are soft and they look soooo pretty.

Sock # 1 stalled somewhere mid-gusset because the ink on the copy of the pattern I had been dragging all over the country had worn thin on the crease and I could no longer read the chart. By the time I picked them up again it was late November and I thought I'd finish them up by Christmas. I boldly cast on for the second one and just read the chart, not the pattern. I didn't remember that you need to move stiches around between each reapeat of the chart and after the first rep, I just couldn't ever get it right. Like a blind fool I just fudged it all along. To the end.


These have the distinction of having the most mistakes in any FO I've ever called done. It's been that kind of sock year. Luckily you can't really tell and I hope Shelly will love them anyways. I got sick right before the holiday so they didn't make it in the mail until New Year's Eve.

Pattern: Pomatomus by Cookie A. from Knitty
Yarn: OnLine Supersocke 100, florida colors, color 1128 (I have alot left), purchased from the Woolery, where the customer service was top-notch.
Mods: My own fixing as I went
Needles: Size 1 DPNS

And for my northern blog-reading contingent, photo date December 20, 2009. Roses in my backyard. Take that!

*Well, that's not really how it happened. I needed some more bobbins for my wheel and the yarn was on sale and it would make the free shipping minimum and well, my sock knitting clearly needed a kick in the butt.