Wool For Brains

The sample sock yarn came out well enough, I’m still not sure that I liked the scary rainbow roving but I don’t really need to worry about that as this is the last of it spun up now. There will be eight stripes in the 50g ball, if I were making this again I think I would like the stripes to be a bit narrower, eight seemed like a good number at the time but I think I would like ten or twelve even more. Now that I’ve seen this knitted I’m going to make the second half of the yarn with just the brown rather than the red/brown stripe. I like the way that the different colours pop out of the brown and they don’t pop out of the red in the same way. This is the second time that I’ve used this red/orange fibre and the second time that I’ve been unhappy with it so it’s had its chance and it now has a hot date with a dye pot.

The V neck cardi is progressing. I’m back to working on the body now, I’ve had a few evenings of sleeves and I’m happy that I’m on track with the decreases. I have a couple more inches of plain knitting to add to the body before I start with any shaping. I’d have a guess that I’m a bit less than half done with the knitting, it seems to be going faster now that the rows are shorter (no surprises there then). I do have some more dark stripes to match that one on the left, they’re round the back and under the arms so providing I keep moving it shouldn’t turn out to be as unbalanced as it looks now.

Unless anything exciting happens my next post will be after the weekend. My car is now taxed and tested but I still have the freezer to sort out and my tax return to deal with. Oh happy day.

Once upon a time (about two years ago) I started a pair of gloves. I bought a single skein of that rare commodity known as Koigu off the internet and set off with high hopes. I was not that far from the fingers when I was forced to realise that it wasn’t working out. There wasn’t as much contrast in the yarn as there should have been, even against a black background which is not my favorite colour to knit with and as a result some of the edges of the pinwheels had disappeared. (I blame the colours on the monitor rather than me just thoughtlessly picking a skein that was pretty) I’d also made a mistake in the pattern and rather than fix it and live with the dodgy pinwheels I ripped it all out. The Koigu is now part of the pile of odd bits of sock yarn.

Enough time has passed now for the memory to have faded, so much so that I looked at the pattern and could not remember what it was that I’d done wrong the last time. A pinwheel blade starts with one stitch and increases to four or starts with four and decreases to one. How hard can it be? This time I chose my yarn more carefully, dark grey rather than black and a subtly shaded light grey as the contrast (Auracania Ranco sock yarns). I think I’ve got to exactly the same place as I reached last time because I’ve just realised that I’ve made made exactly the same mistake as last time. Now I remember what I did wrong the last time. I’ve been concentrating so hard on getting the pinwheels right that I’ve overlooked that a plain line at the top of the pattern and a plain line at the bottom of the pattern is two plain lines, not the one that I’ve made. It does matter because of the way that the pattern continues up the fingers and anyway, it matters because it matters to me. Having knitting off the needles is always dangerous because it’s so easy just to rip the lot. With this all I need to do is to take it back to just above the gusset but now that it’s off the needles I have the chance to fix the whoopsie in the salt and pepper section above the cuff. I know exactly what happened there, I made the bottom section in the cafe at Millhouses Park on the Sunday morning and the top part sitting in the car outside the railway station in the evening. The first of the car rows is loose and messy while I was adjusting to not knitting the steering wheel.

What have I learned from this? Four things really, I’ve got better at picking colours (although this is so much easier when you’re looking at actual wool and not a monitor), black is not the only dark contrast colour, I can knit dark grey at night and I can’t rely on my memory. This time I’m putting a note in with the pattern to highlight the danger area for when I knit it next time around. That will probably be in another two years, teacher will be getting something else this Christmas. I could have saved the cuff but I didn’t, before I knit the gloves again I may well have used the yarn for something else. It is sock yarn after all.

The other reason that I’ve ripped it rather than fixing it is that I do have other interesting things to knit, more interesting than knitting the same section of glove for the third time. The three ply sock yarn does look like it is worth doing, you can see the orange/brown stripes in the skein and the striping will be clearer when it’s wound (it’s not exactly dry yet, it’s dry enough to knit but not dry enough to wind)
Oops, sorry, the blog has been unavailable for most of the day as I knocked the plug out of it this morning while I was  putting some books away. It just goes to show the dangers of tidying up. As I’ve had no internet to eat my time I do now have a decent part of a sock cuff (and a mountain of ironing to put away) but that will have to wait for another day.

On Saturday I made my second attempt at spinning a down fibre, my efforts last year with yak and cashmere were really bad so it did represent an improvement in that it is strong enough to knit with without being wiry. I know that my standards for yarn aren’t always as high as they could be but they are higher than this, it was still not good enough. I wasn’t bothered that it wasn’t as pink as I’ve been imagining but I had been hoping that I could come up with something that looked more like knitting yarn than this. I decided that the answer was to ask for a lesson on spinning short fibres which lead to imagining how the lesson would pan out.

What exactly is the problem?

Well I know I should be doing long draw and I am, but the fibre won’t draw out easily and it goes all lumpy like this, look, and the finished yarn is too soft.

Well you need more twist in the single for a start. The other sounds like a prep problem, did you make rolags or punis like I showed you the last time?

After this the scenario goes downhill fast because I have then to confess that I had been too idle to go upstairs and get the carders and I’d settled for pulling lumps off the roving and fluffing them up a little. Look what happens when you do what you know you should do – the second sample is heaps better than the first. It was much easier and quicker to spin and involved no swearing and searching for orifice hooks. With a bit more practise I might even get something that looks like the sample I cut off the tail end of Badger’s snood. The other plus (at least I think it’s a plus) is that it looks like I have now developed an inner spinner who can sit with my inner knitter and tell me things that I already know.

Also on the wheel are some different colours, just because I can. This is going to be a three ply yarn for no other reason that I’ve never made a genuine three ply in the two years I’ve been spinning. The bobbin on the left and the fibre is merino/tencel, the bobbin on the right is merino/silk (previously seen here) and the third ply is going to alternate between red and brown. If the sample goes well then there will be 180g here, enough for two pairs of socks if the second has a contrast heel and toe. If the sample does not look good then I shall be straight on with plan B, which is a plain mid brown ply to make boring mansocks. Keep your fingers crossed for the stripes because I really don’t feel like making a bobbin full of a solid colour right now. I want a bit of variety, pretty things rather than sensible yarn, even if that leads to something I don’t particularly want to knit with (that would be the beaded yarn calling again. It can call as much as it likes, I am not prepared, I have no beads)

I am daydreaming about spinning something else, something that’s not blue faced leicester in shades of blue or natural alpaca in need of more washing. I have filled bobbin after bobbin of blue and white and I am sorely in need of a change. The end of the blue is in sight, there is another bobbin to fill, two at the most. The alpaca is endless, there are at least three carrier bags full that need to be washed and carded but that is a long term work in progress and it can take as long as it takes. As soon as the blue is done I am having a sampling session. I’m planning beaded silk (not that I’ve ever made a beaded yarn) and delicate cashmere (not that I’ve ever successfully spun anything so short) in colours that are not blue or white. I can see browns and golds, reds and pinks, everything except blue.

The knitting of the blue is fine, it’s just the spinning I’m itching to be done with. This is just as well because there has been a slight set back with the cardigan. I made two samples and they both came out at five stitches to the inch. I calculated the back neck width I wanted and cast on, increasing every other row and knowing roughly how many stitches I’d need on the back to make it fit. The moment of truth came and I slipped it onto smooth yarn to try it on, tada!. The words “skimpy”, “binding” and “negative ease” fitted the occasion rather more than the cardigan fitted me. I had a recount and then in a moment of brilliance actually used a tape measure. The reason that the protocardi was inches too small is because I’m now getting six stitches to the inch rather than the five that I had in the sample. Hello and welcome to an extra 20% more knitting. I don’t mind the extra stitches, it’s knitting and I like knitting, but I felt as if the sweetie had been snatched from my grasp when I thought I was at the division for the arms and then found myself inches away.

Trying this on for fit has been a bit of a joke, I had imagined just slipping it on and hadn’t given any thought to the impact of being attached to so many balls of yarn. When you’re twisting in front of a mirror upstairs and one of the balls is still downstairs there’s no chance of getting the garment to hang correctly even if you have managed to negotiate the yarn tangle and get your arm through the right gap. I’m now working on the first sleeve and am decreasing merrily away and loving it. In another three decrease rows I get to cut off another ball of yarn which really is something to look forward to (if you’re me and have been untangling 31 balls every hour or so, getting to cut one free is a big thing) I’m going to work six inches or so on this sleeve, then the same amount on the other sleeve and then a similar amount on the body. That should put me close to the fitting challenge of my hips at which point I need to decide whether to stick with the side slits in my original design or slip in some increases at the sides. Hopefully I will have got the yarn management issues sorted by then so I can try it on without some errant ball of yarn dragging it out of shape.

Other knitting – well there isn’t any. There is a pair of gloves but I’ve managed to misread the pattern AGAIN so they are doomed to a start-over. Depending on whether my hand falls first on the camera or the ball winder there may or may not be a photo. Other spinning – only in my dreams.

This sock needs a mate but I haven’t decided yet whether I can be bothered to make one. I wanted to see what the yarn looked like in this pattern and now I know. I also know that inches of knitting plain purple yarn is mind numbingly boring. So what did I cast on as light relief from a plain sock? Would you believe another plain sock, also in purple. (There are times when I really wonder about my project planning) This sock did have built in excitement in that I had no frame of reference, the length of the foot is knitted before there’s a sign of a heel or a toe so I couldn’t tell easily whether it would fit. It’s the moccasin sock by Elizabeth Zimmermann, the big thing it has going for it is that the sole, heel and toe are knitted as one piece (that would be the piece that is missing from the photo on the right) and are easily replaceable at a later date.

It does require a leap of faith. The heel goes in the hole where the safety pin is in the above photo and it’s rather like working a top down sleeve cap in that it’s short rowed across a gaping hole. It looks like no heel I’ve ever made.

The toe as I was knitting it was more of a protuberance. It looked like the prow of a supership but from the right viewpoint it was indeed a sock toe. I’ve never knitted this before because the photos in the book (Knitter’s Almanac, Knitting Around and possibly others) show the sock not on a foot and it looks odd. There again most socks look odd when they are not on a foot, that’s why bloggers resort to sock blockers for their photos. The other reason that I’ve not made it until now is that there are 10 stitches on the sole at the toe and the heel that are not grafted together at the end but just drawn up and I’ve wondered whether it makes a blob that you can feel when you walk on it. It’s probably less noticeable in a finer yarn, the foot shaping would probably be less obvious in a finer yarn too but just for once I did what a pattern told me and chose a yarn that knitted at 6 stitches to the inch. That meant that it knitted up very quickly, which was just as well because I’ve put the toe about half an inch too close to the heel. It doesn’t fit, not on a foot or the blocker, and after I’ve unpulled the sole, the toe shaping and the heel I shall try it as another sort of renewable sock, one where I have a heel in place before I have to work out where the toe goes. This may take a while, for now I’m planning to stick it in a drawer and strike it from the work in progress list.

There will probably be no posting next week as it is half term here and although we’re not going away we will no doubt be busy Doing Stuff.

The time spent spinning the cardigan yarn has given me plenty of opportunity to think about what it is that I really want in a cardigan and why. It’s a pause for thought that I wouldn’t have had if I’d bought the yarn. I did say that I wanted three buttons at the top. What I really wanted was for it to not fasten all the way to the bottom, so buttons at the top will work but clasps will too and it doesn’t matter whether there’s one or three. This means that if it comes out small then the bands at the front that are planned to overlap can instead meet edge to edge. I’m adding those bands at the end so if I want I can make them wider or narrower so there’s another easy adjustment to the fit. I’ve thought why it is that I wanted a V neck. What I really want is to not have a collar or anything around my neck. I avoid polo necked shirts for this reason. It doesn’t matter to me what shape the V is or where it finishes, it just has to be away from my neck.

After designing a sleeve and sleeve opening and working out the pattern for the back and fronts I decided to ditch the lot and go for a top down raglan. The sleeves were the issue but not for the reasons that I originally considered. The joining of the vertical bands on the body with the bands on the sleeve was the thing that I couldn’t get over. My sketch had a break line of a solid colour to avoid the bands on each side of the garment coming together. That worked in the diagram because it echoed the dark lines I’d drawn between the bands but they were only there to cover up the white paper left by my poor colouring in. In reality there would be nothing that went with that dark band on the sleeve so it had to go. A top down raglan would allow me to deal with the potential problem area of the sleeve/body join as the first stage in the knitting rather than leaving it as something to tackle near the end. If I don’t like the way it’s looking I have only a few inches to rip rather than having to redesign the join after some of the parts are completed. It also starts small so I don’t need to be using all the various balls of yarn and I can try it on to check the fit. As I’m making both fronts at the same time I can make up the V neck shaping as I go and stop when it’s deep enough and have both sides match. In terms of management of uncertainty, knitting top down has a lot going for it.

There are some disadvantages to top down knitting and I’m well aware of them. It’s going to be a big lump of knitting in my lap and not in the least bit transportable (winter is coming so a lap full of wool is not a bad thing and I will always have socks for a take along project). I’m also going to be working with more than the usual numbers of balls of wool. I’m not sure just how many at the moment because I’ve misplaced my knitting book that has the plan in the back but a quick estimate says that it will be more balls of yarn than a sensible knitter should consider. That’s what you get for planning an intarsia pattern with all the pieces worked together. I’m going to work in one piece until the division for the sleeves and then if it has become a total pain I will divide the fronts and backs and work on each separately. It might be worth the sewing up of the seams to have less yarn management issues.

I’ve managed to weasel out of my commitment to spinning all the yarn before I started knitting (you knew that would happen). The reasons for spinning everything before I started was so that any differences in dyeing or spinning could be spread throughout the garment, rather than being obviously concentrated in one place. I’ve dyed all the fibre I think I’ll need and I’ve spun some of each batch. I’m knitting all the pieces at the same time, sleeves, back, both fronts, so I have ample opportunity to add new yarn wherever I want. There looks to be very little difference between the various balls, except for one batch that has some very dark blue and another that is a bit short on purple. (After I wrote this I tried to work out which of those two skeins was which and they both looked exactly the same. So much for the major differences then.) I have a bit of fibre left to spin but what I really want right now is to get started. So I have. If it all goes pear shaped then I shall have only myself to blame but the first inch or so looks fine. On reflection, pear shaped is just what I’m aiming for in terms of fit anyway.

Just a quickie post today because my focus this week has been on things that needed doing. I’ve had a week of cooking for the freezer (beef in beer, chinese chicken, pork chops in mustard sauce), slaughtered weeds at the allotment and washed, ironed and put away more clothes than I feel is reasonable for a family of three. I did finish up the two pairs of cut and paste socks after which I said I needed a change and would be moving onto gloves. That didn’t happen, I need to sit with a cup of coffee, a tension square and a calculator because I know with absolute certainty that I’m not going to get the 11 stitches per inch that the pattern calls for. I can be clear on this because I’ve started these gloves before and I know that last time I made a smaller size to get to the measurements I needed. They fitted, at least up to the knuckles which is where I ripped them out. Rather sadly I made these before I set off with a knitting book and as a result I have to go over old ground rather than finding the right page and copying from what I did last time.

I did also finish a single sock. It does fit my mother and the bits left over are beautifully small so I am pleased. It will be a while before it has a mate because the days are shorter and I cannot knit black under artificial light. If there is daylight then I will be spinning a sweater (I can’t spin at night either) so my knitting time is mostly at night. The second sock is going to be the swimming sock until it is finished so it will be getting the grand total of half an hour a week of my attention.

Clarabelle asked if the pattern that I used in a hat would work in a sock so there is a section near the toe that is just for her. It works out well enough, it’s ballooning next to the fairisle section because of the change in gauge but that’s not its fault. It is just a simple slip stitch pattern so you are only working with one colour in each row. It’s a 6 stitch pattern, knit two rows black, change to green, (k4, slip 2 purlwise with yarn at the back) around. Repeat this last row three times more, change to black, knit two rows. On the next repeat you need to make sure that the two stitches you are slipping are the ones in the centre of the previous coloured block of four so you start with slip 2 purlwise, K4. Repeat until you’ve had enough. The plain rows on the hat are garter but I thought that might be too lumpy in the foot of the sock, I also only worked the pattern on the instep for the same reason. I was planning to work a salt and pepper toe but gave up when I realised that it was a waste of effort. If you look at the thumbnail all you can see is the light yarn popping out in alternate rows, the darker one is lost.

Just for a change of colour, yet more sweater yarn. One of these is straight off the wheel, the other is washed and dried. If you look at the skein on the left (click for big) you can see that it looks as if the yarn is stretched and flat whereas the one on the right has plumped up. Never again shall I worry that I will mix up finished and unfinished yarn. I should probably say that it doesn’t lose the shine when finished, the one on the left contains silk and the one on the right doesn’t.

It is not raining, I have washing (again! how can that be?) so I’m off to start the wash-dry-iron-hang-wear cycle again. I can’t knit while ironing but I can think about knitting so I’ll probably be planning the cardi at the same time. It needs a bit of a rethink because I’m nearly convinced that I’m going to work it top down.

PS Forgot to say – the first time you make a comment you will find yourself moderated. I’m having terrible trouble with spam comments this week (much more than usual) and when it’s calmed down again I’ll turn the moderation off.

 

This is the last time I plan on publicly chopping up socks and sewing them back together again, so far I’ve replaced a heel that had a hole and replaced a toe (I made it a bit longer at the same time). This pair shows what happens when the hole is above or below the heel (in this case both) and as I didn’t have socks with holes in the right places Carol (no blog) was gracious enough to provide me with a pair. Needless to say the first and quickest repair is darning. These have already been darned above the heel and now have a big hole and a further weak spot under the foot. A darn isn’t going to hold it for long, not unless it’s a really big one and it’s in a tricky spot because of the shaping.

When you’re knitting a heel all the action is around the back, to and fro on the heel while the instep stitches sit off by themselves for later. This means that when the heel needs reknitting rather than darning it’s an easy job to whip it out and knit another one without disturbing the instep. What you have then is a sock with a contrast heel and it still looks good, it could have been an original design feature (especially if the toes need reknitting too). If the hole in the sock is above or below the heel then this was where you were originally knitting in the round and the repair will mean knitting across the instep stitches. This is going to give you a stripe around the front of the foot and they are fated to be Frankensocks. There’s no getting round this, unless the socks had stripes in the first place this is going to be a very visible repair but the choice is Frankensocks or no socks. Even if you are a sensible knitter that kept the leftover yarn in anticipation of a future repair (Carol did, I would have made more socks with mine) you may still be facing an instep stripe. With this pair the sock has faded from the original colour and the leftover yarn no longer matches the sock. The blue patch in the first photo is the darn with the original yarn, the blue has faded from the body of the sock (as has the pink and the latte).

The start is to snip a thread in a row that was knitted above the hole and unpick a round so the sound part drops off. (For the non-knitters – knitting only rips out in one direction). These are Widdershins, knitted toe up so it’s the cuff that is above the hole. With an eye to grafting this back together later I choose a row that is midway between cable crosses. It’s not possible to rip back the heel when there’s a darn in it so the next step is to cut the darn out. Then I rip back the heel until I get past the hole at the bottom and into sound yarn again. I now have a sock foot with some gusset increases and a cuff. If I look at the other sock I can see that there are nine increases in the gusset, I have seven so I need to knit in the round, increasing every other row until the gusset increases match those in the other sock. This is the start of the instep stripe because the new yarn is now showing on the front. Having made the heel it’s back to working in the round again until the sock is the same length as the other less one row and then graft it back to the cuff. Ideally when you graft it back together you will notice if you missed the cables off the back of the heel before you’ve woven in the ends and called it done. I don’t mind snipping holey socks but I didn’t want to start cutting into good ones so I left it and made the second to match.

If you knit the Widdershins heel as written you will run into difficulties with the instep even if you have a hole just in the heel. This is because there is one round within the pattern that is worked across all stitches, it picks up and knits the wraps just before starting the slipped stitch pattern and decreasing the gusset. If I was knitting this heel in future I’d omit that line and knit the wraps as I came to them in the decreases just so if I came to replace the heel I’d have a chance of avoiding messing with the instep. I do dislike that stripe very much indeed.

In terms of knitting long lasting socks it makes sense to knit a heel that is easily replaceable (one reason why I knit only two sorts of heels, I don’t need to think too hard about what I did the first time). I don’t know how long it’s reasonable to expect my socks to last for, the oldest pair will be three at Christmas and they are still going strong after a retoe. These are lovely socks, they were well knitted, the pattern was adjusted for a 60 stitch sock which meant rejigging the heel and there was a lot of work in the cabling. You can see how little work went into making a new heel compared to the work that went into making the whole sock and hopefully they will now have a long and active life until the toes go through (there’s enough of the heel yarn to make new toes too)

I still don’t like that stripe though and there is going to be some research involving the dyeing of a square knitted from the old yarn taken from the heel and the new yarn. The socks aren’t ready to go home just yet.

The Honeybee stole has buzzed off and the yarn is now on its way back to the stash. I was on the third repeat of the second pattern and it hit me that this was no fun. I should have realised it right at the start when I couldn’t settle on the right needles to use. The first flush of love for a project should have meant that I would be glad to knit it on chopsticks but I fiddled around with straights and circulars, lace addis and new wooden needles. I just didn’t like the yarn, I didn’t like it at the outset and it didn’t grow on me at all. I feel so much happier without it sulking in the knitting bag. Fourteen inches of lace was a lot of work to rip but there would have been a lot more work needed to finish it. I should have listened to my inner knitter and ripped it sooner.

This means that there’s nothing but socks on the needles again. There’s the mostly black scrap pair, the pretty purple pair, the white ones where I’m knitting a heel and the ones that need the toe reattaching (yes, I know these will only take five minutes to knock off but they aren’t as interesting as some of the other stuff). I’m slowly spinning my way towards the cardigan, I’m about half way to having the yarn I need so that means it will be a while before I’m ready to start knitting (especially as I’m spinning alpaca at the same time). Whatever fills the gap in the knitting bag needs to be something small and not a sock, it’s not that I’m sick of socks but I feel like a change. I’m thinking of a small sideways step into gloves or maybe a big leap off at a tangent into a steeked cushion cover. There will be a slight pause for thought and dyeing yarn because I’m not starting anything else until I’ve finished off two things out of the above line up.

I did not sell the interestingly shaped carrot on ebay although I dare say that there’s a category for novelty vegetables. We didn’t eat it either, we had enough carrots without starting on the ones that are difficult to scrub. It would appear that I stand no chance with action photos (which we knew given the evidence that yarn moves too fast for me) because even the big fat sleek Gpigs are too quick for my camera. The ginger blur is top-pig Laura claiming anything edible as hers, under-pig Tewkesbury was left with the greens.

There is another anniversary today and we’re actually celebrating this one with a bottle of fizzy intoxicant rather than with an amusing carrot. The blog is one year old today. You can thank my husband that it is here at all, it took him two years of nagging for me to start it and he has been very patient with me through the times when I’ve broken the blog, the camera and the internet. He’s fixed it every time and found the camera card for me more times than should be necessary (although if he’s not continuing to back up my 207 posts there will still be no Aussie fizz for him tonight)