March of Socks

(This is a picture post, but you have to scoot down past my blather.)

I have started a second pair of socks concurrently. I wound up my handspun cable-plied yarn from the fiber club. (I still think the name sounds too sexualizable; seriously, “Fondle This!”? All it needs is an unwanted pregnancy and it could be a teenage “romance”.)

The yarn was originally PINK in various screamingly PINK shades from cotton candy to PeptoBismol (probably ™ or ® or © or whatever.)  When spun and plied, it melded into something eye-searing, so I over-dyed it with “Spruce” Jacquard dye.  The new color is beautiful. It has depth and vibrance. I should grab some pictures of just the yarn. done

I wanted something simpler than the dozen-row bias waves motif. So I am making ribbed socks. One of the benefits of thicker handspun yarn is that I needed vastly fewer stitches. The body of the foot is knit with 48 stitches on size #3 needles. This project will move in and live at my desk for when I am reading things online or watching podcasts. The more complicated project will move out to the sofa, next to the abacus for keeping track of the pattern. Stupid how mere placement of a very portable thing would keep me from working on it, but very true.

I am wondering if I can finish two pair of socks in March… It would be really neat if my unwillingness to keep going on boring parts would be ameliorated by switching off.

Now for the eye candy. As usual, click any image to be taken to the Picasa page with the big version. I have to manually add the outlines to each picture with this blog theme and it gets tiresome very quickly. I should pick a new theme or actually pay WordPress.com so I can fix this one, but it is a very low priority for me. You might generally assume that you can click a picture. Worst case, nothing happens. 

Lookingglass socks, toe done:

Sousa Tuesday socks, toe done; yarn was “Candy Butter”; yarn is now “Fat Tuesday Blues”):

From facts learned to weirdness shared.

I am working on my as-yet-nameless March socks. 

I have learned to read and chart bias-knitting textures. I understand how to get sharp diagonals and how to get smoother arcs. I understand that I can substitute an M1 (or M1b, or the Bordhi variants therein) for YOs. Assuming this comes out even tolerably, I will not be hurting for textures ever again.  I will definitely look into that “jigsaw” texture without the YOs. 

I kept looking at those brocades done with purl stitches and dreading that. The transistion between knit and purl takes as much time as a whole stitch. Then looking at the end result, it was still mediocre. 

The Schaefer Heather yarn in “Gertrude Ederl” is 3 colors and they form non-uniform stripes of about 1 row. This is giving me the effect of a self-striping yarn, so the motif should definitely skew the row height in some way, otherwise I might as well not bother since the colorway would overwhelm anything else. I think this yarn would look good in a ribbing, but I am not masochistic enough to voluntarily rib an entire sock without knowing what needs atonement.

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I am wearing my Raspberry Friday Socks today. They are very comfortable and attractive in my maryjane shoes. 

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I spun some more of the silk thread I am planning to use for plying the llama from February’s fiber club shipment. Then I started spinning the llama. I am going to buy more of this baby llama fiber in future, it is really wondrous. I would like to have a blended llama+[soft sheep wool]. 

I am starting to suspect that I will be buying a drum carder. 

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I could use some help on the naming of socks. (And yes, I do have that “Naming of Cats” poem in my head right now.) I think this is yarn is a “dark” variant on twilight. It reminds me, strangely, of Alice in Wonderland, only shadier. 

I made a joke tonight, while chatting with a friend, she said that at least my socks do not need three different names… but that is why they all have the same surname, Socks. I was deliberately misunderstanding the reference. 

I wonder if it will sound like I am mocking Indians (not from India) if I called this project, “Gertrude Looking Glass Socks”. I would like it to have a dark equating adjective without sounding actually evil (since I am going to wear these and I do not need to jinx myself.) Maybe like Marjorie? The villain from “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”. Frankly I am thinking this is getting too weird for most people.

Socks Hopping

On the plus side, I am no longer a photo slacker. I have tolerable pictures of everything I bought. I posted the photos of my completed socks. I even avoided making the joke about being caught flat-footed. If you want to see more of the completed Raspberry Friday Socks, the thumbnail here links to the full-size image in the album. Or you can look at the previous post.

 

 

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Today’s project was to pick the new sock yarn and choose a pattern. I know I want to make the “Nagini” socks from the Knitpicks “Essential” yarn. Unfortunately,  I knew right away which yarn I wanted to use next— because I am suckered in by the shiny just like everyone else. But hey, I bought that Schaefer Heather yarn for a reason.

 

So I did some looking to see if I was attracted to anything particularly. The new yarn is a bit stiff and holds stitch definition well, but I am easily dissuaded by complicated projects. I even spent some time reading the textures/motifs book I borrowed from the library. Nothing seems perfect. I did a swatch in the quilted lattice stitch and would pull out all my hair if I had to do it for a whole sock. (I have the perfect 8sts/inch gauge though.)

Before 90 people jump in and recommend “Monkey“, I really dislike that pattern. The alternate versions are somewhat better, “No Purl Monkeys“, “Staggering Monkeys“, and “Los Monos Locos“. But it starts to look like work… like I would be creating my own texture because I would prefer no yarn-overs, I know it will go faster without purling, and I want to go toe-up, and I prefer the ovals to the inverted-Y shapes.

I have come to no conclusions tonight.

Today also had the over-dyeing of the January fiber club yarn. The color is vastly improved from the sickeningly bismuth pink color. Pictures are waiting on the yarn to dry.

Pictures of Stitches West purchases later this week.

Here I am.

Hi. I am an idiot. Feel free to point and laugh. My computer got a virus. I could not fix it. I did have anti-virus. I did have anti-spyware. I did have router firewalls in place. Nothing worked. I got help. The help could not fix it. The whole thing had to be wiped. I did retrieve my data and most things are back to normal. But the remaining things are going to especially affect you my readers. I cannot get pictures off my camera. Admittedly, this will be relatively easily solved by the installation of some software, whenever that becomes a priority. 

I received the February fiber club shipment. It is a really ridiculously soft baby llama fiber and a spool of embroidery thread for plying. The llama is a hazel gray color that goes between oatmeal and sea green depending on the light and what the ambient colors are. The embroidery thread is an unfortunate shade of electric turquoise and is 100% polyester. However, I have a plan. I have some dyed silk fiber. It looks fabulous next to the llama. I am so excited about this that I am finding it hard to finish working on the January fiber. 

The second Raspberry Friday Sock is progressing. I am about halfway through the foot now. I have finished 2 of 6 pattern repeats. 

I realized that I am on track to knit 12 pair of socks this year. I sort of want to push for that, but sock knitting really detracts from other fibery projects. Weighing in the other pan is the fact that I have decided to bail on the 50 books per year for the first time in about 5 years– (Feel free to email if you want to discuss my reasons.) so it might be nice if there was something to measure my progress through time against.  Plus I have bought the yarn, I better do something with it.

Recommend your favorite sock yarn!

Now would be the time to speak up and tell me all about your favorite sock yarn. I have very little opinion brand-wise and a newb’s unwillingness to spin it myself. 

There are a few caveats I would like your comments to have, please tell me:

1. the ply-count and whether it is a cabled yarn
2. how tight it is spun and whether the stitch definition is clear
3. where I can get it

So far I have used Knitpicks Imagination, and Pagewood Farm “hand dyed sock”. The Pagewood is superior in terms of stitch definition and yarn “roundness”, but splits easily (even with blunt Addi needles, the replacements are not here yet.)

Socks and Squee

Raspberry Friday Socks proceed apace. There was a lot of discussion on [a famous blog] about how patterned socks go faster than plainwork socks. I was skeptical, but I am a believer now. Not to mention how awesome the fancy socks are when they are done. There is no questioning point where you ask yourself, “Could I have just bought these in a store?” 

The Rav project says I started on the 25th. I did not really start the actual knitting until the 27th. I have finished 2/3 of the first sock. There is some urgency because when I admitted I wanted more sock yarn, my husband said, “Make another pair, then you can order whatever you still want.” This was good advice because I have a better idea about the diversity in sock yarn. And also because I had a chance to look around more. Now I am looking at nicer sock yarns. Obviously, since I only need 100g, I could afford the silk blends… 

A friend (seedlessgrape) turned me toward Sundara Yarns. If someone has tried their fingering silky merino, I would love to have a reference as to its thickness. Knitpicks Essential and Knitpicks Imagination yarns have the exact same suggested gauge, but in my experience it was 9sts/in on #0 for the Essential and 8sts/in on #1 (and it probably should have been 7.5 on #2, but with a 2-ply I wanted it knitted tight. ) And my current Pagewood Farm yarn says the same suggested gauge, but knits at about 7sts/in. (I am knitting it on #1s, but loosely and still getting. 7.5 ish.) So there is a wide range and the suggested gauge is random.

I am not certain I want to order from Sundara because there is just too much competition. I know it is a hand-dyed product, but a lot of the time it seems like places could hire some help and not have artificial shortages. Usually if I have to fight for a chance to buy something, I would rather shop elsewhere. This is true at the farmers’ market, it was true of fiber sellers. It seems like I could find something I like proportionately as well but there is enough to go around and a successful purchase will not come with a heaping scoop of guilt. If I get lucky enough to buy a Sundara yarn, (which currently has 4 months of look-ahead hype and a 3 month delivery timeframe and they sell out in under a week once the new colors are opened for purchase) I am denying someone else the chance. I am being selfish in a bad way because my success hurts someone else.

I can buy undyed similar yarn from Paradise Fibers for about half the price. I suck at dyeing, but Paradise Fibers will not send my yarn with free Guilt Trip tickets. That would be why I stopped buying from Spunky Eclectic, in case you were wondering…. the month she hyped the new colorway of the month for 2 weeks and it sold out in under 10 minutes, I was just gone. There were hundreds of people clamoring on the Rav group and they were all so disappointed. I could not imagine having gotten some while all those people were so upset. I would not even want it any more after I saw that. I looked, and worse yet? I did not even like it. It did not seem like the kind of thing that would have been popular without the extraordinary difference between supply and perceived demand. Popularity sells yarn. The more seemingly popular something is, the better people think it must be, so the more they want some. And the more popular something is, the harder it is to get some, the more people want their share of it. Which drives the cycle. There is not always a positive correlation between perceived quality and actual quality either. 

I like my dyers successful enough to stay in business, but not so overwhelmingly popular that the whole thing implodes. 

I also came up with the sock-knitters extreme project. I want Fair Isle OTKs. Not for the next project. It is a sort of goal project. “By next winter, I want to be experienced enough to make myself Fair Isle kneesocks.”  I might actually work on that… I have a Shetland fiber sampler I was intending to spin for Fair Isle mittens. I do not know why I thought I might want mittens, but I could really come up with something fabulous, idea-wise, and do my own motifs. I would have a gray-scale version of Fair Isle… I could really, really enjoy that.

Selfish and Snaky Thoughted

I read the Selfish Knitters group on Ravelry. Corry sent me there. I find that most of it is useless for me, because I am a selfish knitter already. The women (and they are all women) are all trying to learn to refuse favors. 

Most things I make are for me. If I make something for someone else, it is of acrylic and simple. But that is not selfish of me, since most people prefer acrylic yarn gifts because they are going to want to wash them but will not have a clue how to prevent felting. 

Anyway, today I saw a discussion of what to have on Selfish Knitter badges and I found my favorite, “No I can’t knit something for you, I don’t like you enough.” 

I took up knitting as an excuse to buy yarn. Later it occurred to me that if having yarn was the goal, then I should spin it instead. Even now it is hard for me to give away handspun yarn. I like the yarn better than I do most of the people I know. 

I finished my first real pair of socks this week,

and I have been looking  for my next sock pattern. I am wavering stil, but these are the front-runners: Nagini, Fawkes, Phineas, Leyburn, Anastasia, Wyvern. I really dislike the Monkey socks, even though everyone raves about them and the no-purl variant looks fairly simple. But by the time I added in the toe-up mod, the short-row heel mod, the foot-sizing mods (because I have wide insteps and short feet. 8.5″ foot length is generous, but I have 8.5″ circumference feet at the widest part) I might as well just start from scratch. Then add in the fact that I really do not like the texture, and they seem really pointless. 

[Later, but before posting] I did a swatch on the yarn I have. It is Pagewood Farm “Hand Dyed Sock Yarn” from before they had several types, this one is 80/20 Merino/nylon in some blue+green colorway (the band says “custom”):

 Colorwise, I am seeing a combination of cerulean and cerulean blue. 

 

I find that it really does not knit to 8 stitches/inch gauge. I can get it there but I have to really tension the yarn harshly and the resulting fabric feels very inflexible. (It just really is not very nice yarn.) That pushes the decision toward Leyburns. 

This is almost a disappointment because I really liked the Nagini texture (although, honestly, that is a lot of cabling) and I had a name for it based on the wyverns in Might and Magic VIII. Next sock yarn has more purple in it and looks more like the couatls. So, maybe all is not lost for that pattern…. there will be other socks.

You would not believe the research that goes into these project names. I have a dozen wiki tabs open full of various mythological systems bestiaries. Did you know the Chinese and Japanese have a Black Tortoise and a Blue Dragon? The Norse have a dragon that eats oak trees’ roots. Then there is the Evil Overlord List that says #34: “I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.” Then most cultures have had some sort of serpent-based myth. There was an unbelievable amount of interesting stuff to read. 

There is so much Norse mythology about magic and sorcery being the province of women because it is all about the weaving of threads, but there was the idea there that the weaving would bind the enemy or free allies. Weaving and warrioring were of equal value. Bound in Freyja’s [blue] Eyes. Weirdly that bothers me because it is incredibly rude to take someone else’s deities in vain. I find myself interested, but not enough to convert just to name my socks!

The Leyburn socks use quilted lattice stitch, my yarn is an blue-green colorway. But I have nothing beyond the obvious. “Caribbean Blue” is a song by Enya. It does not resemble mermaid scales because it does not have the look of overlapped sections. The lattice makes a diamond pattern… but “blue diamonds” feels like it should be followed with “and purple horseshoes, all in Lucky Charms!” But that shows you how old I really am. General Mills no longer makes Lucky Charms with blue diamonds. It would be too obscure if I called my socks, “They’re magically delicious!” The color also reminds me of those blue raspberry freezer pops. Raspberry Parade! (The common household misnomer for Prince’s song, “Raspberry Beret”.) That is a little too obscure also. The diamonds also remind me of cyclone fencing.

Strangely I am going with Raspberry Friday Socks.