I finally got around to taking a picture of my Becoming Socks, which have, indeed, fully become something wonderful. In the past 10 days, since I wrote about them, I have finished them and am almost finished with the first sock in another pair.

( And here they are: )

Back in December, I put my Sidestream Socks into time-out, since they persisted in being too big. Way too big.



There was a real temptation to just rip the whole thing out and start over. But I resisted. There was no point in starting over if I couldn't figure out how to make the socks fit right. See, these are based on a set of formulas in Cat Bordhi's book New Pathways for Sock Knitters. Once you know how many stitches you're knitting per inch and how many rows per inch, you combine these with the size of your foot, and go on autopilot. And, it was the autopilot that done me wrong. So I had to figure out how to tweak the autopilot. (Ignoring it wasn't a palatable option.)

I finally identified three factors.

(1) I thought I knew how to measure the circumference of my foot. But, what I hadn't fully internalized was that Cat Bordhi's instructions for measuring foot circumference aren't quite conventional. When I measured my foot the conventional way, I got 8.75", but when I measured Cat's way, I got 8.5". It's only a 0.25", but when I plugged the new circumference into the formulas, and rounded down rather than up, I ended up with a lower base number for my sock than I had before. Given that the increases in foot diameter that allow the sock to fit over my heel occur at a fixed rate, this lower base number meant that it would take fewer rounds to finish the increases and that, therefore, the sock should come out to be a little shorter.

(2) The instructions tell you to knit the foot until it's a certain length long, then place some markers in the course of an additional round, and then start increasing. Well, that additional round adds some extra length. And the larger your stitches, the more length is added. For the previous pair of socks I knit from Cat's book, I'd gotten 13 rows per inch; this heavier yarn knit up at 10.5 rows/inch. So, this accounts for 1/10 of the problem extra inch.

(3) The next problem area is the bottom of the heel. This is a parabolic area that, for these particular socks, took 18 rows to create. The book provides two alternative stitch patterns for these 18 rows, and asserts that you can wait until you're ready to start the heel to decide which pattern you want to use. Well, I'm here to tell you that you can't. The two stitch patterns aren't the same density. The denser option would give a parabola approximately 90% the depth of the parabola produced by the less dense option. For this sock, not compensating for this difference would make the foot approximately 0.25" longer. So, the second time around, I made sure to start the increases 0.25" earlier than I had the first time.

My explicit calculations accounted for approximately 1/3 of the length I had to lose. And, it seemed logical that the lower base number of stitches should account for the other 2/3. But, there are no guarantees. So, as soon as I finished the heel on the first sock, I knew I had to give it a try. And, to my relief:



They fit! They really fit!

After that, it was all downhill. I finished the second sock yesterday.





Project Details
Yarn: Socks That Rock, mediumweight, 24 carat colorway, 120 grams (out of 160 gram skein)
Needles: US 2 (2.75mm) circular
Pattern: Master Sidestream, from Cat Bordhi's New Pathways for Sock Knitters
Gauge: 7.25 stitches and 10.5 rows/inch
Stitch pattern: stockinette foot, Eye of Partridge heel, ribbed (k2p2) cuff

So, the background is that my sister's birthday is this week, and the family is getting together for lunch on Saturday. I had promised her a pair of socks, from soft yarn, that would go with both of her pairs of Crocs—the purple ones and the orange ones.

I had started knitting in plenty of time, but, as detailed in my last post, had over-optimistically assumed that flaws in the second skein of yarn would miraculously disappear when I finished the sock. I finished the sock last week, and the flaws were still there. So, I had to move on to plan B. Hence the designation "Emergency Socks".

( Here be pictures and details )

At one of my family lunches over the winter, my sister observed that she was the only one there not wearing something I'd knit. My father had a vest and a scarf; my mother had a sweater; I, of course, was wearing a sweater and hand-knit socks. My sister, she had nothing. Needless to say, I informed her that that situation could be remedied. I'd previously knit her husband (who was out of the country for that gathering) a scarf from Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, a durable and soft sock yarn. My sister's always been sensitive to wool, but was quite certain that this yarn would be soft enough.

We then turned to a discussion of color. She intended to wear her socks indoors, with her Crocs. She has two pairs of Crocs, an orange pair and a purple pair. And it just so happened that I had some Shepherd Sock stashed in Douglas Fir, a bluish/grayish green. So, towards the end of last month I realized I'd better get cracking, as her birthday is the 21st. And what should pop up in my Google reader bloglist but a posting in The Panopticon describing his Primavera socks.

I finished the first sock in about 10 days (I did some other knitting in the meantime!) and was best pleased.



But the second sock? My Ravelry notes on the project (membership required) include the following, from March 9:

The second ball of yarn is distressingly different from the first, though they’re from the same dye lot (I checked!). Aside from differences in color distribution that might be within the range of acceptable, there are spinning anomalies. I had to cut out one section with suspect drafting and insufficient twist in the plies; it was about 4 times the thickness of the rest of the yarn. This situation was making me unhappy enough that I had real tension problems around the heel turn for the second sock. It was most definitely too tight. So, yesterday I had to frog almost the entire gusset and reknit, reminding myself to keep my hands relaxed. It seems to have worked, and I’m almost done with the second sock. Now I have to think about whether I want to email Lorna’s Laces about my issues with this yarn.

Even though the yarn was clearly problematic from the moment I started with it (the skein itself was messily formed, making it difficult for me to wind it into a center-pull ball to work from), I plodded on. Realistically, I should have formulated a plan B as soon as I noticed the first color anomaly. But, no, I developed the mindset that the darker streaks would look like features, not bugs, once the socks were done. Even when I had to cut out an area of bad spinning/plying in the yarn, I figured that things would be OK, that the sock wouldn't look that bad.

I finished the second sock this past Monday.





OK, it's not that bad. Until you put it side-by-side with the good sock:



The socks are wearable, but most definitely not giftable.

After a few days' stewing (and some polite urging by Franklin, whose original posting inspired me to make these socks, in a Ravelry message), I did, indeed, email Lorna's Laces, with pointers to pictures.

And, in the meantime, I've pulled some Regia silk in a dark olive green from my stash and started another pair of socks, in an unvented bamboo rib. They're a quick knit, but I'm not convinced that the Regia silk is as soft as the original Lorna's Laces. And the color isn't as nice. But they will be done by next weekend. And right now, that's all that counts. If I'd acted resolutely when I first observed the anomalies in the yarn, I'd have had plenty of time to order more or to receive a replacement from the manufacturer. But, because I was in denial, I'm kind of in a corner. So, there you are.

I've been procrastinating at finishing my Thermal. Really, all it needs is the buttons. And my sister's socks are progressing apace. But how better to procrastinate than to start a new project. And finish it. The accompanying picture shows me, with empurpled face, modeling a new hooded scarf.

It's not for me. Friends at work are active in a choir that has a silent auction every spring to raise funds. I generally donate a knitted object. And the hooded scarf is this year's donation.

But there's more to it than that. If you look closely, it's twisted.

This picture shows the twist a little more clearly. What this scarf is is a knitted mobius strip. It has a single side. And it was knit that way. Sure, I could have knit a flat scarf, given it a half twist, and grafted the ends together. But where's the fun in that?

Instead, I bought Cat Bordhi's book A Treasure of Magical Knitting, which provides instructions in a mobius cast on. You cast on in the middle of the loop, as it were, and you work out to the edge. I'd originally planned to use a fairly lacy cowl pattern from Cat's web site, but the lace wasn't suitable for the yarn, a fuzzy mohair with little bits of tinsel embedded in it. Instead, I did a kind of garter rib, alternating blocks of four knit rows and four purl rows. I don't know if it shows in the pictures, but the scarf looks almost as if it has little bits of freezing rain all over it.

I very much enjoyed knitting this. The yarn isn't something I would have chosen (I received it in a sale grab-bag), but I kind of like it. (Well, not enough to actually buy more of it, beyond the two remaining balls in my stash.) But I can definitely see making another scarf (or three) with this general structure.

The details:
Yarn: Filaro 12-ply mohair, 50 grams/109 meters (I used a scosh more than one ball), color 102 teal
Needles: US 10.5 circular

A few years ago, I made my mother a pair of brown wool socks. But she wears them as house socks. I can get over the fact that she's wearing them out faster than necessary; in a clash between nylon carpet fibers and wool socks, the nylon's going to win. That's up to her. But, I worry about her wearing bare socks on the kitchen and bathroom floors. She's not as young as she used to be, and her balance isn't as good as it used to be. In other words, socks and linoleum are a potentially dangerous combination. So, about three years ago, I bought the yarn to make her a pair of heavier weight slipper socks (3 balls of Mission Falls 1824 wool, in a light brown which I hoped she'd like as much as I disliked it), to which I would attach leather soles, so she'd be able to wear them without danger to herself and without worrying me. Two years ago, she requested a sweater of a particular tweedy sort. I devoted a lot of time and effort to finding appropriate yarn and designing a sweater she'd like. But I hated the yarn enough that I seem not to have taken any pictures of the finished sweater. Oh well.

Last year, before I could get to the slipper socks, she requested a wrap. She's never been a shawl person, but she saw a need for something she could snuggle up in when she reads. Based on my description of the picture she gave me, I posted a query on advanced_knit bought the book containing the recommended pattern. And the wrap was finished in time for her last birthday.

A few weeks ago, the family got together for the winter solstice. My mother was wearing the green tweedy sweater from two years ago (I guess she really did like it). My father was wearing a yellow sweater vest that I knit for him a few years ago, as well as the scarf that I just finished for him. My sister has allowed as how she really could wear wool socks if they're soft enough; the Lorna's Laces that I used for her husband's scarf will do. Fortunately, I have some spruce green yarn in my stash that will go nicely with her two pairs of Crocs (purple and orange).

I carefully steered the conversation to avoid any hints from my mother. If she expressed a specific request, I'd have had to let the brown Mission Falls marinate in my stash for another year. And, since I really want to reduce my stash, I didn't want that to happen. Fortunately, I was able to cast on for the slipper socks, finally, at the beginning of this month. I finished the socks last week, and ran them through the washer so I could block them. This afternoon, I finally sewed the soles on, after some strategic googling for tips on blanket stitch. And, here they are:



The yarn that I knit the slippers with is too thick to use for attaching the soles; it won't go into the pre-punched holes. Fortunately, I save my leftovers from knitting socks, and I was able to identify some Trekking XXL that looked like it would work with the brown socks:



When I made my own slipper socks last year, I actually put them on and contorted myself more than any one person should so that I could sew the soles on. But, in one of the Ravelry forums, someone suggested stuffing the socks with plastic bags, so that's what I did. It made an amazing difference, and the blanket stitch looks pretty good, if I must say so myself.



Now all I need to do is wrap the slippers:



Project Details:
Yarn: Mission Falls 1824 Wool (superwash), just under 150 grams color 07
Needles: 3mm circular
Pattern: my own. Basically, I cast on 60 stitches, worked a k2p2 ribbed cuff for 6 inches, did a stockinette stitch heel flap, picked up the gusset stitches, and worked the foot.

Late last year, I organized my yarn stash. In the course of doing so, it became apparent that I had more yarn than I had room for in my cedar-lined storage cubes. So, the obvious thing to do was to take the largest bag of yarn and knit. And, so I did.

I had some bulky weight yarn I'd bought at an end-of-season sale last year. It was yarn I didn't need, of a sort I don't normally like. But, it was on sale. I've learned from bitter experience, though, so I made sure to buy enough for a sweater—9 50 gram balls at c. $9 per ball, reduced from $14.95. Even searching on Ravelry, I couldn't find any patterns specifically for this yarn, so I was forced to improvise. The first step was to gather some information, so I knit a swatch:



When I'd bought the yarn, the shop owner assured me that, even though the balls weren't identical, they'd all have all the colors represented: teal, green, blue, and maroon. It's a multi-plied yarn, and each ply has a different color combination, so there are sections of teal/maroon, blue/maroon, green/blue, blue/teal, etc. It was going to be important, for aesthetic reasons, to join balls of yarn in such a way that the same kind of color transitions occurred between and within balls. As a result, I had to knit in the round. And, to make sure that the sleeves flowed organically from the yoke, I had to knit from neckline to hem, so that I'd be able to control the color transition where the sleeves joined the yoke.

So, I pulled out my copy of Knitting from the Top, by Barbara Walker, which provides guidelines for top-down raglan pullovers. I've followed these guidelines in the past, and discovered, the hard way, that it's easy to end up with a sweater that's too big. And I'd figured out why. When you follow the Elizabeth Zimmerman EPS guidelines for a bottom-up raglan, you knit an inch or two plain before you start decreasing along the diagonals from armpit to neck. However, the top-down guidelines don't include this phase; you're instructed to keep increasing until the diagonals are long enough. I didn't do that. Instead, I used my gauge swatch to figure out how many stitches I wanted to have for the body and how many stitches I should, consequently, have at the widest point on the yoke, and I increased until I had that many stitches. After that, I knit even, until the diagonals were long enough.



At this point, the test was in the fit. Even putting half the stitches on another needle, and contorting myself in front of the mirror, the best I could do was guess that it was probably OK. This was, in part, because the gauge had changed on my swatch when I blocked it; it got wider and shorter. So, I had to allow for these changes in evaluating the fit of the garment-in-progress.

I kept going, with breaks for other projects; I had a bad cold over the winter, and, when I was hit with chills, it wasn't fun to have a really heavy project on my lap. But, still, this was a fast knit. I finished it about a week and a half ago, with less than half a ball of yarn left. The color transitions all worked OK.





Last night, I finished blocking and wove in the last few ends. (Because the yarn is so bulky, I actually had to use a large crochet hook to do this, as I don't have a yarn needle with a large enough eye.) And, to my delight, it fits pretty much the way I'd planned. Now, all I have to do is wait for it to be cold enough for me to wear a bulky pullover.

Project Details:
Yarn: Nashua Handknits Equinox Stripe
Needles: US 13 (9.0mm), in round for yoke and body, magic looped for sleeves
Gauge: 2.5 stitches/3.5 rows per inch, blocked
Pattern: based on Classic Top-Down Raglan in Barbara Walker's Knitting from the Top

Cast on 20 stitches, 3 rows k1p1 ribbing, switch to stockinette, 4 short rows in back for neck shaping, raglan increases every other round until there are 138 stitches, knit even until c. 11 inches raglan diagonal, divide for sleeves, cast on 8 stitches each underarm, knit even on body of 100 stitches c. 17 inches, dec 10 stitches, 3 rounds k1p1. For sleeves, pick up the 8 underarm stitches, for 35 stitches at top of sleeve (I picked up a few extra stitches to avoid holes and decreased them away in the first few rounds.) After c. 2 inches of knitting even, I decreased 1 stitch in the center of the underarm every 4th round. At the end of this, I was at c. 17 inches, so I decreased 6 stitches on the next round, leaving me 18 stitches for 3 rounds of k1p1 ribbing.

So today was a totally yucky day. Even though we didn't get the snow and sleet that folks further north got, it was still cold and rainy. And the cold that I'm getting over is now at the nasty, anti-social cough stage. Yesterday, I went to the supermarket and bought cough syrup. All through the evening, I was wondering why I'd wasted my money; I wasn't coughing that badly. Hah! Around 3AM, I dragged myself out of bed, staggered to the kitchen, and poured myself some vile-tasting cough syrup. In the dark. (Well, to the light of all the electronic clocks and such-like; I was surprised just how many of them there are!)

So I was certainly in the mood for cocooning today. Fortunately, the National Hockey League provided appropriate entertainment for me: an outdoor hockey game in Buffalo. An NHL-size ice rink was constructed in the middle of the stadium where the Buffalo Bills play (they don't need it, as the season's over), and a spectacle ensued. So, I watched, and knit. I started these socks on Christmas day, watching basketball games (what else is there to do when you don't celebrate the holiday, and everything's closed, except Chinese restaurants). Given that I was sick over the weekend, I'd spent time knitting that I would otherwise have spent doing such useful things as cleaning and decluttering. No matter. All I had to do was finish the foot of the second sock. And I did, completing the final toe decrease just as Sidney Crosby's shootout goal was winning the game for the Penguins. Before getting up to change the channel, I grafted the toe and wove in the ends. They'll be ready to wear tomorrow. But, in the meantime, here they are:



Yarn: Trekking XXL, color 104
Needles: 2.25mm HiyaHiya circular
Pattern: Simple Trekking Socks, from Mimknits

I often find it very frustrating to knit socks from a pattern, since so many designers (or perhaps the editors they design for) have unrealistic notions about appropriate gauge for a particular yarn. I have yet to meet a fingering weight yarn that produces a good fabric knit at 8 stitches/inch, yet many published patterns require a loose knit like that that I can't imagine will wear well. This pattern, on the other hand, was for an appropriate gauge, and the resulting socks fit me quite nicely.

Of course, since I'm not a pattern person, I didn't follow the pattern exactly. The pattern calls for two bands of displaced ribbing at the top of the cuff and two more near the toes; in between there's just plain ribbing. Well, I liked the look of the offsets so much that I did the entire cuff and instep in offset ribbing, alternating 8 rows of k2p2 ribbing with 8 rows of p2k2 ribbing. Aside from the aesthetics, a stitch pattern like this makes it much easier to count rows and, hence, to make both socks as nearly identical as the yarn will allow (this colorway of Trekking doesn't have a noticeable repeating pattern). In addition, I did an eye of partridge heel instead of a standard heel.