Category: socks

Remember the hydrangea sock yarn I wound a few weeks ago and left languishing in my knitting bag?  It came out of hiding this weekend.

I needed a project to work on while we watched a movie on Saturday.  We were watching Amarcord, which neither one of had seen and we both felt we SHOULD see it.  And so I thought that socks would be the perfect accompaniment. 

I was wrong on more than one count. 

First of all, although we both expected heavy symbolism and lack of plot, we both had trouble with Amarcord.  I suspect that I must blame my distinctly non-intellectual, sappy romantic leanings for my disappointment.  Although the film showed love for the characters, as a whole, I found it incomprehensible.  But then again, all the people who recommended it to me were young men (back when I too was young) and perhaps it taps into some kind of male adolescent angst to which I am completely oblivious.

But the sock, the sock, what about the sock?

I intended to knit the pattern that came with the sock yarn, hydrangea sock but found that the pattern was difficult to perform on those tiny size 000 needles, what with the yarn overs and knit two togethers.  This was especially true while watching and Italian Movie with English subtitles.  What may have been marginally incomprehensible completely lost me if I looked down at my knitting.

So basic stockinette was the order the of the day, and I am quite happy with the way the socks are turning out:

It is difficult to capture the colors on film, those purples and violets are so elusive.

I am knitting from the ball.  If you recall I had trouble winding this skein into a center-pull ball, got the yarn all twisted and generally made a mess of it.  When I started knitting I generally got all wrapped in yarns and twists and general mayhem, so I actually spent most of the movie rewinding the yarn from the center-pull ball into a nice round, hand-wound ball, from which I am knitting quite easily.

I expect the second skein will go better, since Theresa wound that one and she was much more clever at speaking the yarn’s language.

Most of the sock knitting accomplished so far was actually done on Monday night, while I watched the new season premier of The Closer.   The story was a bit of a stretch, the writers seem to be trying awfully hard to find new story lines, but it was entertaining and rare is the program today to which I actually have to pay attention.  Simple stockinette socks were the perfect project.

I really like this short row heel.  I wonder why I put the sock aside thinking I had to look up the instructions on how to do it?  It is so easy and so intuitive and much nicer than working that heel flap which I hate.

For my short row heel I worked on half of the stitches, in this case 32 stitches of a 64 stitch sock.  I worked back and forth on one needle.  Each row was one stitch shorter than the previous row, wrapping the next stitch on the needle (unworked) before turning my work.

I continued in this vein until I had 8 active stitches remaining on my needle.  I think the instructions had recommended 14, but that was too wide for me.  In fact every sock I knitted before I learned this technique has been too wide through the heel.  I guess I have narrow pointy heels.

Then after you knit the 8 active stitches, you start picking up one stitch at the end of each row, wrapping the next unworked stitch.  When you pick up the stitches as you increase back to a full 32 active stitches, you are now actually picking up one stitch and two wraps, a little tricky on tiny needles, but certainly fun.  It may not be the prettiest heel, but I am hoping to get better at it with practice.

With this technique I may actually become a sock knitter and who knows, a sock wearer.  Well I need them anyway, at least for the gym and the garden.  I don’t believe there is any rule saying I can’t wear pretty socks when working in the garden.

I opted to go with the socks on Friday even though I did not cast on before we left for Tanglewood.  George drove up to Massachusetts so I knitted and the cast on was much easier the second time, even in the car.  I used the figure-eight method whatever it is called, and I did not break any needles.  I got about half way up the toe shaping before we arrived in Lenox and parked; pretty good I think.  I drove home, as my night vision is much better, so no further sock knitting was accomplished on Friday.

The sock certainly was more portable than Otto at this point and I enjoyed carrying it around with me.  In Rhinebeck on Saturday I stopped in at Bead and Purl to talk to Alexine, whom I had not seen for a few weeks, and worked on the sock.

More sock knitting was accomplished at the movies Sunday night when we went to see The Devil Wears Prada.  I got carried away at one point, got the sock turned around and knit backwards half a row, but luckily it was on the top so I just treated it like a short row and carried on.  This will probably work well as my tops are always a bit longer than the bottoms due to my high instep bones.  Unfortunately, although the clothes in the movie were great, and I admit I wanted to see it just for the clothes and Meryl Streep, they were not knitted.  The shoes were also fabulous.  I wanted to freeze the movie several times just to stare lustfully at the shoes, but they were not shoes that could be worn with hand-knitted socks.

Alas.

I have not, despite the practicalities of aging feet and the fact that I live in a stylistic black-hole, gotten over my love of sexy shoes and high heels.

Have a happy Fourth!

House guests have arrived and must go perform my hostessly duties.

Today was one of those frustrating days where you run around and around and feel lucky if you find at the end of the day that you have at least made it back to where you started. 

And so I was thrilled to have a pink slip, telling me I had a package to claim at the desk, waiting in my box when I stopped  at the post office to get my mail.  Better yet, it was a fiberly package:

I knew what it was, but that did not lessen the thrill I experienced when opening the box to find this:

Oh Joy! Oh Joy! Oh rapture!

This, the first yarn in the Sundara sock club is breathtakingly beautiful!  I must knit socks again. 

Of course first I must knit the second pink sock, as its mate has been languishng away, unloved, almost forgotten even, in the unfinished projects drawer.  Of course socks have not been heavily on my mind of late.  I don’t mind knitting in the summer, but knitting socks.  I don’t eve like to think about socks.  Or so I thought.

I am not, for the most part a multi-project knitter; although I have had occasional affairs.  I do think I can have a sock and a main project though.  Perhaps if I had had a sock on my desk, something to keep my mind occupied when computers and phone calls, and all other annoyances were driving me batty, I might not have lost my cool this morning, even for a brief moment.

Pink sock number 2 must come out of hinding.  Calla lily awaits.

There was substantially less knitting in Tucson than anticipated and as a result I packed too much yarn. The upside that there was substantially more
couple-time and that was a joy.

I did work on Rogue while in Tucson and am now near the end of the back shoulders. There has been little progress this week as I have been running around
like crazy between work, normal back to life tasks like grocery shopping,
taking the car to the shop (3 times, most annoying) and getting materials and
plans together for the sewing/knitting den remodel. I am anticipating hoping that the mason and
carpenter will be here next week, turning the kitchen and family room into a
mess as they rebuild the chimney over the stone fireplace, which acts as a wall
between the two aforementioned rooms and have therefore tried to get as much
done this week outside the house as possible. 

Airplane knitting consisted of sock-knitting.  The sock is being knit inside out as I feel that the purl side shows this particular yarn best:

I needed another portable project and hit the web.  I found instructions for toe-up socks here.  I have basically ignored them except for the instructions for the Figure-8 cast-on which seems fiddly but works.  I suppose it gets easier with practice.  Luckily I had two sets of size one dpns as I broke one on the cast on, too bad that I only have wooden needles in this size.

The yarn is Sock It To Me Collection Colori which my mom gave me for Christmas.  The colors are pretty but I am wondering if a garterstitch toe might have shown it off more.  Perhaps I will use some kind of pattern for the body of the sock.

I knit this on the train to NYC yesterday.  We listened to a lot of wonderful Mozart.  Had a lovely drink before the train, and then came home. 

On the trip home I managed to knit until the conductor collected our tickets, which was just outside Yonkers.  Then I was tired, my back was sore, my hip was sore, my feet were going to sleep and  and I was terribly cold, so I wrapped myself up in my coat and tried scrunching myself into a corner and escaping into sleep.  I slept from Yonkers to New Hamburg, an accomplishment in and of itself.

We celebrate the return of winter to these here parts. I do enjoy the white stuff and even the cold,
and even though my thoughts were beginning to turn toward spring gardening, I
knew it was too early and Mother Nature still had evil tricks up her sleeve. Truth be told, I revel more in the white
stuff than G does, who is grumbling about having to go out and plow. I am thinking about cross country skiing…

Of course, I get to spend the day indoors
working at my newly functioning computer wearing bright and cheery Carnival
Socks:

Basic socks knit according to directions from Annie Modesitt
in Confessions of a Knitting Heretic.

Yarn: Simple Stripes
from KnitPicks in color Snapdragon

Needle size 2

I do really like the toe and heel, especially the afterthought
heel, it fits nicely and snugly on my narrow heels. I am learning more about adapting sock
patterns to my high instep and narrow heel, but this heel is quite
promising. I would like to do something
like this from the top down or toe up, but the afterthought heel has definite
advantages. Hmm….more exploration of
sock techniques is called for I think. I
wonder if the short-row heel is similar?

As for the toe, picking up the stitches and knitting it as
an afterthought is fine and I could be easily adapted to a top-down sock. There must be some really neat way to cast on
the 8 stitches at the toe and knit the sock toe up from that, although
generally I don’t mind grafting at all; it just seems like it would be nice to
not have to go back and finish the toes after the fact.

I still prefer to call them carnival socks as they are
rather garishly bright. Still, I can’t
help but smile when I put them on, and who sees them under pants and covered by
shoes, or snow boots? Yet I know they
are there and even a dreary gray winter day is brighter because I know they are
hidden away, warm and snuggly, on my feet.

I tend to like bright and colorful things, although I am far more
likely to keep them hidden away, like my brightly painted closets, or this box
in which we store brown paper bags from
the grocery store:

It goes so well with the socks, don’t ya think?