The Knitting Pirate

It has been a while, huh? Where did I leave off... ah yes, wintertime. I knit these totally mindless socks at knit night, in the car, and while sitting through countless meetings at work. As usual, I made sure to match the stripes up.

The yarn was a deep dive into my stash from 2008. It's Lang Yarns Jawoll Aktion Color in the amazingly-named colourway "0233", and it was just a standard sock knit: 64 stitches, 20 rows of cuff, 36 rows of heel, and a spiral toe down to 20 total stitches.

I forgot to write about these socks, but I finished them about a month ago. Oops! After the second time the Pirate Socks went wrong, I angrily cast on this simple pair of socks so that I could knit something that would come out right.

It's a standard 64-stitch sock, with 2x2 ribbing at the cuff, and the flap heel/gusset that I've worked out to fit the shape of my foot. The yarn is Lana Grossa Meilenweit Colortweed, which I bought in (yikes) 2007 when I was first getting into sock knitting - an oldie but a goodie, and I'm glad to have gotten it out of my stash!

I like to make my stripy socks as much of a matched pair as possible. For these, I knit until the leg was "long enough" and then started the heel flap at a convenient reference point: the first stitch of the darkest blue part of the colour progression. The heel flap and turn didn't use an entire stripe, so after the heel turn, I broke the yarn and skipped ahead in the colour sequence. That way, the picked-up gusset stitches would again begin with that darkest blue, and the sequence wouldn't break across my ankle. I also made a note of where I started the toe decreases so that they'd match perfectly at the ends.

Et voilà:

I bought this yarn a long time ago, knit half of it into a Jaywalker sock, realized that the sock was too small, put the whole thing in time-out for years and years, and... well, why not just re-skein it and knit some plain stockinette socks that are sure to fit? I need mindless projects for knit night, anyway.

As always, I try to make the stripes on my socks match up. Sometimes that's tricky when the stripes are very wide and the repeat is long, but fortunately there was enough yarn to make it work here.

Austermann Step, 64 stitches, size US 1/2.25mm needles.

It's another rainy day here in northern Virginia, and possibly the last day that it will be cool enough for handknit socks, so I'm taking advantage of the weather to wear my new pink knee socks!

This yarn (ONline Supersocke 100 Sierra Effekt, colourway 584 Pinks) came from someone at knit night who was destashing. She had four 100g balls of it, and tried to convince me to take them all, but I thought two would be more than enough for a pair of knee socks. I used just about 160 grams of yarn for both, so there's enough left over in case I want to make matching pink armwarmers.

To avoid second sock syndrome, I knit the socks in parallel, rather than sequentially. It feels like they went much faster that way! The pair took two and a half months from start to finish, which is a good pace for me - especially for knee socks! I started the first one while we watched the Super Bowl, and the second one on a train ride, and then I swapped off working on them to keep them fairly even with each other. This came in handy when I was doing the increases and ribbing, as I could be sure to start at exactly the same point in the striping sequence.

I began with a figure-eight cast on and increased to 64 stitches. As I worked my way up the foot, I started thinking about what heel to use - and then I remembered! I'd bought the instructions for the Fish Lips Kiss Heel and hadn't tried it yet! So I made my foot template, found my ankle bone, followed along with the photo tutorial, and voila! Well-fitting socks. (It's pretty difficult to take pictures of one's own feet.)

When I had knit as far as my calf muscle, I started to do some math for the increases. I measured my leg at 9" from the floor, then 10", 11", and so on, and multiplied the measurement by my stitches per inch gauge. Ultimately I increased four stitches every other round until I had 96 stitches on the needles. When I got past the widest part of my calf, I switched to a 2x2 ribbing and kept going that way until the socks were tall enough.

In other news, I have my first baby pepper! As soon as it stops raining, I can move these plants (there are twenty of them) to their summer home of three-gallon pots on the back deck. I hadn't planned for twenty pepper plants, but here they are, and so now I'm planning for lots of pepper jam, salsa, hot sauce, relish, chili powder, pickled peppers...

The first time I saw "Nothing Says Screw You Like a Rainbow" from White Birch Fiber Arts, I swore that I'd buy it if I ever got the chance. (It's currently out of stock, but there are other rainbow and self-striping colourways available!) Even though I usually waffle over adding to my already-overflowing stash, back in July when I heard that there was some of this gorgeous yarn available, I hit "buy" without a second thought.

Self-striping yarn like this doesn't need any textures or patterns, which is ideal for the mindless knitting that I prefer for my traveling socks. I cast on at the end of December, and then I knit while Michael drove up and down the east coast - to and from a snowboarding trip to Vermont...

...then to and from my inlaws' for Christmas, and back down to Virginia for Chanukah and New Year's, and then I knit on the airplane (link is to a video on instagram) to and from our vacation in Utah...

And now they're done!

I started each sock at the beginning of the sky blue stripe, then knit 2x2 ribbing until the start of the rainbow. The heel flap also begins at the start of the rainbow stripe. I'm amazed at how well this worked out; apparently my feet are *just the right size* and the socks' toes end right at the end of the rainbow.

The two-ply yarn is slightly thinner than I'm used to. I started with 64 stitches on US size 1 (2.25mm) needles but thought the fabric was a little loose for hard-wearing socks, so after the heel flap I switched to US 0 (2mm) for the foot. That 0.25mm really made the difference, especially in row gauge. When it came to the toe decreases, I worked two plain rounds between each decrease round (usually it's only one) for a more gradually angled toe, ending with 16 stitches on each side before grafting.

Each new pair of socks is my favourite, but these might hold the position for a while.

After some months of ignoring them, I've finished the green stripy socks! I'm so pleased that the stripes line up perfectly from sock to sock. (I mean, I did that on purpose, but I'm still pretty pleased at how well it worked out.) This is about as plain a sock as it gets: twenty rounds of k2, p2 ribbing, followed by an awful lot of stockinette interrupted by a regular ol' flap heel, and a star toe with four points. The yarn is Austermann Step in colourway 96 Forest Green.

My original intention with these socks had been to try the Flexi-Flip needles with them, but that totally didn't work for reasons... primarily that while everyone else seems to agree that a US size 1 needle is 2.25 mm, Addi's size 1 Flexi-Flips are 2.5 mm. Since then, I've acquired a set in 2.25 mm, and as soon as the green socks were done I cast on for a new sock with this Silkie Socks that Rock in the "Walking on the Wild Tide" colourway, which was from their sock club some years ago. I got this yarn only a few months ago, from someone at our local knitting night. (Thanks!)

I'm planning to do something fairly simple again, but with columns of slipped stitches to attempt to break up the pooling a little bit, and an eye of partridge heel for a change. A review on the Flexi-Flips will be forthcoming once I get a little more used to them, too.

This year's Maryland Sheep and Wool was a whole new kind of experience - the plan had been to go with Mom, but Dad and Michael joined us for the day too. Nothing really jumped out at me as something I needed to buy, but I did drop off the fleece that Carrie and I bought some years ago with a processor who said she'll have it back to us by mid-October. The only thing I brought home was this picture of the alpacas:

Five and a half years ago, I bought this green Austermann Step yarn at The Mannings (which, sadly, closed a few years ago. Ah well.) It's going to make be my next traveling sock, perfect for hauling around with me to work on while waiting for mechanics and flying across the country. As a winterholiday gift, I got a set of Addi FlexiFlips, and thought that this would be a great time to test them out. I've heard both good and bad things about them, and I've been curious to see if I'll love or hate them.

I already had several inches of sock knitted on my trusty old DPNs, which meant that I'd be working from them onto the new FlexiFlips.

But when I went to make the first stitch, something seemed off. The new needle seemed subtly thicker. Maybe it was just my imagination? I got my gauge ruler.

It wasn't my imagination.

I almost always knit socks on US 1 (2.25mm) Susan Bates DPNs, which I buy at Joann in a multi-pack of sock-sized DPNs for a small amount of money. (They're $10, but then everything at Joann is at least 40% off.) So I'd asked for the FlexiFlips in size 1 as well... without realizing that while Addi do sell a size 2.25mm set of FlexiFlips, their size 1 is actually 2.5mm.

Well, heck. Everyone else calls a 2.5mm needle a US size 1½, not a 1. And Addi's other needle sizes match up with the usual US to mm conversions. Harrumph!

I guess I'll just keep going on the DPNs, because even a .25mm difference in needle size can make an obvious difference in gauge, but... do I spend the money for a set of 2.25mm FlexiFlips, when I'm not even sure I'll like knitting with them? Do I try a different sock on these 2.5mm ones first, despite my concern that they'll be too loose? Do I write to Addi and complain about their non-conventional sizing? How disappointing.

The "obvious" solution, I guess, is to hang onto them and spin some more sock yarn, which tends to come out a little thicker than the commercial yarn (at least it does when I spin it) so that I can finally try these.

Woohoo! Finished socks!

These socks were knit toe-up with Kroy Socks in the "Blue Striped Ragg" colourway, and the contrast cuffs/heels/toes are knit in Premier Serenity in navy blue. I... was kind of displeased with both yarns, actually. The Kroy was all right, but every other colourway of Kroy socks I've knit has been thick and squishy on US 2 (3 mm) needles, and this was just thinner than a standard sock yarn. It was fine, just not what I was looking for. The Serenity, on the other hand, was thin and slippery and splitty and I don't like it at all. Hrmph.

That said, I'm pretty pleased with the finished socks. I had to do some duplicate stitch reinforcing around the corners of the heels, but the extra short rows in these heels make them fit better than the other afterthought heels I've done before. And I *love* the stripes! I do wish I'd thought of knitting the first round of the cuff to prevent those little purl blips, but they're kinda cute so I guess it's okay.

So... what's next? I'm still working on the handspun sock, but that's not great at traveling because the yarn-cake collapses when I put it in my bag. I need a sock that I can carry around with me, and a pattern that's interesting, memorizable, and doesn't take too much concentration to knit. Maybe I'll pull out the stitch dictionaries and put something together!

As I made progress on the handspun sock, I started to think (as you do) about heels. What kind of heel would I use? Would it be deep enough? A typical short-row heel would definitely not fit, unless I did some increases first. So I did some research and decided to try the Banded Expanded Heel technique, which is a modification of Cat Bordhi's Sweet Tomato Heel. I measured my foot, checked my gauge, did some maths, and knit the heel...

No. (I didn't even take any pictures.) It's not that the heel was poorly designed; it's actually great. It's that my calculations were off in pretty much every way. I'd started too late, so the foot of the sock was too big. And I'd increased to too many stitches, so it was also baggy. I ripped back to just after my initial increases and did some more research.

Eventually I decided to try the straight-up Sweet Tomato Heel without modifications. I don't have the book with all the sock patterns, but Cat was kind enough to upload a detailed tutorial video for just the heel itself, which I was able to follow well enough to knit the heel without wondering if I was doing it right. (I was.)

It's difficult to try on a sock at this point but I did wriggle it onto my foot, and it seems to fit just right. It's *impossible* to take a photo of a half-knit sock with DPNs sticking out everywhere while it's on your own foot, so I slid it onto one of the blockers for a photo op.

So far I like the Sweet Tomato Heel *way* better than the standard short-row sock heel, and I definitely want to use it in more socks! I'm going to have to try it with regular sock yarn to see if it still needs the pre-heel increases, at least. One thing I *really* like about the Sweet Tomato Heel is that I'd feel comfortable just knitting it from memory, which is a lot of points in its favour for whatever sock-in-progress is traveling around with me.

It's taken a concentrated effort, but over the weekend I finally finished the combospin that I started for last year's Tour de France. It's all spun up, plied, and skeined off - The Woolee Winder on the Sonata makes plying so much faster and easier! I ended up with roughly 700 yards of three-ply yarn from two pounds of a variety of fibre. I'm sure it will poof up and lose some yardage once it's washed, which I'll do later today.

Now the question is, what to do with it? My original plan was to spin for a sweater, but I don't think I have enough yardage to make that work. Probably I should have gone for a two-ply rather than three, if I wanted sweater yardage. And, if I'm being honest, I'm not 100% thrilled with the overall colour. I put the yellow in for a pop, thinking it would be too dull without it... but it's too much contrast, too much of a barber-pole effect.

Maybe I'll like it better once it's knit up? I'm considering making some treadle covers for the spinning wheels. I often spin barefoot, and wouldn't that be nice and soft and squishy!

Meanwhile, I started knitting toe-up socks from a different handspun yarn, this chain-plied merino that I spun a few years ago. First I tried knitting on US 2 (2.75mm) needles, which gave me a fabric that was slightly too loose. Then I switched to US 1 (2.25 mm), and I'm getting a very firm and stiff sock... but that's okay, these will be hiking/boot socks. And since the yarn isn't superwash, I expect it to get softer and stretchier with wear and time.

Because they're so firm, though, I'm trying a new kind of heel. I started working increases about an inch and a half before where the heel should start to make a small gusset, and then more increases will get worked into the short-row heel wedges. This should be interesting at the very least, and if it doesn't fit right... well, maybe this yarn wasn't meant to be socks after all. I have 500 yards or so of it, so there are lots of possibilities.