Start As You Mean To Go On

I have a new friend who is learning to crochet. I host a small but broad-minded knitting group that shuns no-one. I'm not sure the quilters even know they're in a knitting group. Shhh, don't tell them!

Celeste paid us her second visit today. The first one was more reconnaissance to see what we are like. This time she brought her work and meant business. She had started a first crochet project, gotten bogged down, taken time out to crochet a simple baby gift or two (successfully, too -- good for her!), and now wanted to get it going again.

Her bag in her lap, she began reaching in to pull things out. This is just practice yarn, she said. The ladies in the local yarn store had told her this was a more inexpensive way to get started, until she's mastered it. She'd been shocked, I think, at the cost of yarn for a sweater she'd thought of for her small daughter. The yarn shop ladies offered the practice yarn and project as an alternative.

Out of the bag came three skeins of yarn, in pretty cream, pale blue, and taupe. Three skeins of practice yarn. Three skeins of ethereal, fingering-weight, fuzzy-haloed, baby alpaca. Celeste's practice yarn is Misti Alpaca.

At first, I have to admit, I was taken aback at the idea of such a wonderful yarn treated as practice yarn for a beginner's project. But then I started to see what perfect sense it makes. Even in the first awkwardness of handling unfamiliar tools with unaccustomed movements, the enjoyment of the beautiful materials themselves would help you to feel good about working at learning a new skill. I wouldn't suggest yarn of such a fine gauge and fuzzy hand for every beginner, but Celeste seems a precise sort of person, well prepared for the close attention it requires at first. The point, either way, is that it be beautiful.

She showed us what she'd done so far. Three or four delicate squares of a feminine, flowerlike granny square pattern destined to be a soft, lovely scarf. She showed us the pattern in her beginning crochet book. In her choice of practice yarn, her start at a scarf looked more appealing than I could ever have imagined the scarf in that picture could be. Much. Her first project will be a knock-out, that she will wear, and love, and take pride in.

The more I think about it, the more I realize she knew exactly what she was doing. Start as you mean to go on.

Oh, What A Relief It Is!

Well, I went ahead and ripped out the toe of one of the pointy-toed Gentleman's Fancy socks and had another try. Here are both versions, modeled on my conveniently-available-but- smaller-than-intended feet. I don't know; do you think the redesign might have made a slight difference? :)

Seriously, with the original toe, I despaired of these socks ever fitting on a man's foot. But the one with the re-done toe seems like it might actually be roomy enough. Better, much better. Phew!

What amazes me is that, by my reckoning, the re-done toe on the right has only two more rows of knitting than the original on the left. Really. That's how much the extreme tapering of the toe was affecting the size of the sock.

Further field testing with a suitable test subject confirmed the initial findings. The new high-capacity design can accommodate a reasonably typical man-foot. Now that engineering design and validation are complete, production roll-out to Fancy-two can proceed post-haste.

I have re-checked the pattern for this sock in the Knitting Vintage Socks book, looking for any possible misunderstanding or error: the number of rows, the number of stitches at each stage, the length in inches. Everything checks out. It's just simply a pointy-toed sock. And even with 20-20 hindsight, the photo just gives no earthly clue that there is anything unusual about the shape of the toe. That sock must have been blocked within an inch of its life.

In any case, the finish line is in sight. Just a little more wanton raveling, some picking up of itsy bitsy stitches, and straightforward re-knitting, with an easy mind.

For the next project, after all this time spent with colors so subdued, I have a feeling I'll be in the mood for something brighter. And speaking of subdued, playing now and then around these parts is a band called the Subdudes. I can't say I know a thing about them, since I've never gone to see them play, but I do know a great name when I see one. :)

Bless Your Pointy Little Toes

Why, why, why didn't I trust my gut feeling a little earlier? I had a suspicion there was something a little odd about the shaping of the Gentleman's Fancy socks. But I was so happy to knit away thoughtlessly that I really just didn't want to dig too deeply.

In knitting the first sock, I noticed that the pattern had some, ahem, peculiar features. The heel turn starts with an unusually small number of stitches. The toe tapers down to an unusual degree before calling for grafting. The grafting weaves together the left and right sides of the toe, instead of the top and the bottom. These are not errata. They are all perfectly, precisely designed and specified. It was what you might call an interesting sock to knit.

When it was done, I tried it on myself, noticed a little room in the toe. OK, that was good. Extra room in the toe was exactly what I wanted to see. I was just hoping it would be large enough for a bigger foot. Not caring to examine the matter too closely, I focused instead on how handsome the stitch pattern looked when stretched out on the wearer.

As always, I went ahead and rushed headlong into the second sock. I knit my way through it quickly, blithely, unknitting and reknitting when I encountered the inevitable minor second-sock mistakes, untroubled and happy, until the thing was complete.

I held it up, looked at it, before asking for help from world's-most-patient-husband in testing it for size. I couldn't avoid noticing any longer; it did look a little odd.

Only then, finally, did I face the facts. OK, I admit it! The toes are a little pointy. Really pointy. Awfully pointy. Pointy enough to poke someone's eye out.

Just how pointy?

This pointy. Oh, my goodness.

This view is of the bottom of the foot. (Don't ask me why; that's just how it decided to pose for its portrait.) You can sort of see the side-to-side grafting, too, which only serves to emphasize the general abundance of pointiness.

Well, it's an adaptation of a vintage pattern; maybe people's toes were pointier then. Or maybe it was a perfect match to the pointy evening pumps late-Victorian gentlemen might wear with their tightly tapered trousers. But it's more a curiosity than a comfortable match for a moderately rounded set of modern human toes.

And as you can see... the heels are pointy, too.
But I really think that will just kind of stretch away when the sock is on an actual foot, won't it? Yes, I thought so too.

So, it's taken a lot of consideration and more than a few heavy sighs, but....

Dear Fancy-one and Fancy-two,

I'm sorry; I don't know how to break this to you gently, so I'll just have to say it straight out. I'm going to rip out your pointy little toes.

I know it sounds painful. But I assure you, it's going to hurt me more than it hurts you. After all, you'll soon be as good as -- no, better than -- new. You'll be getting proper toes, like all the other socks have. But I will never get back the time I'll be spending cross-eyed, picking up 140 teeny-tiny little stitches in tiny little skinny yarn on tiny little needles. I'm only doing it out of an abundance of love.

Thank goodness, at least I haven't already woven in the ends!

Too Tightly Wound? Part 2: Spinning

I'm wondering if there's a theme here. We've already looked at the evidence that my knitting might be just a wee bit high-strung. What about the spinning?

Well, first of all, the whole body of work we're talking about here is pretty small. A couple of puffs of mystery wool that I bought along with my handspindle when only the first inklings were dawning that this was something I might like to try. A sweater's worth of Coopworth wool in its various natural undyed colors. Some dyed locks of unknown breed that I bought to try out my brand new handcarders last spring. And a sumptuous Lorna's Laces hand-dyed top that I'm half-way through right now.

Nevertheless, if forced to make a judgment on that small sample, I would have to say that almost all the yarn I have spun has come out... firm. Sturdy. Durable, I'd say. Not that it's a bad thing, but I'm still hoping I might be able to produce something a little more tender and yielding.

On the blogs, I keep reading about how wonderfully soft handspun is, how it's such a pleasure to knit with compared to commercial yarn. Mine doesn't yet have that lovely voluptuous temperament. If anything, it seems a little dour. Oh, it's definitely real yarn, nicely uniform, which is a victory in itself, and one that I'm proud of. It looks beautiful. But the hand is disappointingly no-nonsense. It will probably make a strong fabric that would show cables well and wear like iron.

I have a feeling that I'm making the beginning spinner's mistake of over-twisting everything. I read about how you have to give one type of fiber a little more twist than another to keep it from drifting apart. Let me just say, loosely spun strands drifting apart have not been a problem for me. :)

It's not that my hands can't keep up with the drafting. I believe I've learned reasonably well how to handle and control the supply and draw out the fibers. No, I think what's going on is that I'm so thrilled to have gotten the hang of it that, in sheer exuberance, I'm peddling away on the treadle far too lustily!

A skill like spinning. that you have to get the feel of, seems to be a challenge to learn from books and trial-and-error alone. At each step of the process, it means guessing about what I'm aiming for, what it should feel like. But I'm still learning, analyzing, and each skein brings me a little more knowledge.

So, the jury is still out, but I think the defendant repents and will be trying very hard to abuse helpless fibers no more.

Too Tightly Wound? Part 1: Knitting

It strikes me to wonder lately if I'm a little too tightly wound and need to loosen up.

To the best of my memory, it seems like I've generally knit at a fairly average gauge. But some recent observations have shaken me to my boots. Could it really be that I've been a tight knitter all these years and didn't know? No, that's just not possible. Consider the following exhibits:

Exhibit 1.
I had to go up a needle size, from US 0 to US 1, to get gauge on the Gentleman's Fancy socks, now underway. That's funny; I don't think this is usually the case (but maybe I haven't been checking carefully?)

Even so, I have a sneaky feeling that maybe I ought to check it again, because the first sock of the pair seems suspiciously narrow. It's a stretchy stitch pattern. But still.

I'm a little concerned about whether it's going to fit a man-sized foot. It's a bit large on my average-sized woman's foot, but I'm not sure if it's large enough, especially up near the top of the cuff, for a man's well-turned muscular calf. Maybe it's just that Nancy Bush, whose pattern it is, is an exceptionally loose knitter. Sure, that's it.

Exhibit 2.
I like my needles pointy. I've seen it said somewhere that those who dislike blunt-pointed needles are probably tight knitters. I remember trying my first pair of Addi Turbo circular needles, in a US size 7. Addi Turbos are finely honed instruments, veritable weapons in the knitter's arsenal, gleaming and dangerous. I liked their sleekness, appreciated the nickel-plated slipperiness that makes for fast, smooth knitting.

The points did seem a little blunt, but not so much as to be a problem. For another project, I went ahead and ordered a pair in US size 3, figuring the points would be scaled down along with the needle diameter. Not so. To my dismay, when they arrived, the points on the size 3s seemed no smaller than those on the size 7s. Not one whit. (OK, that might be an exaggeration. I think they were actually a little smaller. Maybe one or two whits.) That, I did not care for at all. Slipping those great big dull points under a thin little strand of sport-weight yarn was not my idea of fun. I soon abandoned the Addis and went back to an old standby set of needles. But that was surely just a fluke.

Exhibit 3
Lately, after a whole row of purling, the stitches have not been sliding so easily on the needle. But I have monkeyed around a lot over the past year with my purling technique. Having been unthrilled by the characteristically loose leftmost stitch I was getting in ribs and cables, I was looking for a way to eliminate it. Oh, I know there are a couple of tricks people use for this (for instance, here), but I was determined to solve it my way. I may have tightened up my purling a bit too much in the process. A minor adjustment out of whack, that's all.

Exhibit 4
I saw a side-by-side test. I sat next to a friend in one of the Market Session classes at Stitches East. We all knitted, as part of the lesson, the same pattern, with the same yarn. My knitted sample was just that little bit smaller than hers. With the same size and brand of needles. Hmmm.

My stitches looked small and even (for the most part). Hers were more comfortably relaxed. Well, then probably she was knitting a little too loosely for the most consistent results. Obviously. That would be it. Of course.

Exhibit 5
My great-grandmother, who gave me my first knitting lessons, was known in our family as a famously tight knitter. All her work was beautifully done, but very tight. OK, but I was barely knitting at all then! I was too young! It was years later when I really learned how to knit! I'd forgotten everything!

Coincidence? Who can say?

(I wonder if anyone has ever done a research dissertation on the effect of genetics on knitting style.)

And Speaking of Monty Python...

OK, I know we weren't; not really. But a remembered little snippet of dialog made me look up an old favorite movie, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail. " I happened to light upon a Wikipedia entry that, among other things, gave some details about how the movie was made. And oddly enough, there was a knitting connection. It seems that to outfit the movie's knights-in-armor on a shoestring budget, the film-makers faked the chain mail by using wool, painted silver!

There is also some talk of complaints about the wool being clammy, absorbing water in the cold wet weather. But no, obviously they must be wrong, as all my knitting books tell me. Wool keeps us warm and dry because it absorbs all that moisture. At least that's what we like to think. :) Maybe there's a threshold beyond which it throws up its hands and says, "Och, a wee hank of wool cannae do anything mair!" Stereotype tells me that this dampness threshold might be regularly exceeded in the U.K., though the weather when I've visited there hasn't necessarily borne this out.

Anyway, another link led me to a YouTube clip of the scene where the knights are being repelled from invading a castle by the hurled insults of a defending Frenchman. The Frenchman is the always-loopy John Cleese. You might find it either hilarious or puerile, depending on whether you have a liking for anarchic silliness and can tolerate a modicum of childish rudeness. I laughed myself senseless. Regardless, you can get a good look at the "chain mail." (It's perfectly ordinary garter stitch, as far as I can tell, but it's still kind of interesting to see the knightly garments.) If you're up for it, it's here. Or rent the movie for an extended dose.

I also have fond memories of skits from the TV show. One that comes to mind is the Ministry of Silly Walks. Maybe we should establish a Ministry of Silly Knitting Mistakes. We could admit to the most ridiculous accidents that had happened in our knitting, safe in the knowledge that others have made mistakes just as silly. As I said, I've made a sock without turning the heel, and I've probably made two lefts of something instead of a left and a right. I've made the whole front of a sweater accidentally using an unmatched pair of two needles in different sizes.

Surely I'm not the only one!

Second Sock Syndrome? Pshaw!

Sure, I've heard about the dreaded second sock syndrome, the boredom-fueled procrastination over knitting the second sock of a pair. For many, it seems, once the thrill of discovery and accomplishment of trying an interesting new pattern has been exhausted with the first sock, the prospect of making another holds no charm. It becomes a chore to get through sooner or later (often much later). Perfectly natural.

But that's not me. I'm not so anxious to be immediately on to the next new thing. In me, there's still a trace of the two-year-old, exhilarated after a little swing through the air in my Dad's strong hands, shouting "do it again! do it again!"

I rather like knitting the second sock, working my way again through the pattern that I've already done once. I like watching the first sock's identical mate gradually appear. I don't mind the need to occasionally "read" the stitches, examining them closely to be able to duplicate first sock in every detail. I like knowing that I can master what's lurking around the next bend. Difficult patches? Dimly lit pictures? Errata? Misleading explanations? Ha! They've met their match. They hold no terrors for me. I will wave my knitting needles in their general direction!

If anything, it's the grafting that puts me off just a little. And what gets me past that minor bit of drudgery to close up the toe of the first sock is the strong desire to get those last two needles free so I can cast on for the second one! I could sneak the needles out early by threading the live stitches awaiting grafting onto a stitch holder or waste yarn to await their moment, but I choose to regard that as cheating. Eat the vegetables first, then have dessert. It doesn't take so long, after all. Then, the minute the fiddly work with the tapestry needle is done, the cuff of sock number two is immediately underway.

Mind you, I'm not saying I never mess up on the second sock. The danger for me lies in over-confidence. Eager and certain I know what I'm doing, I breeze ahead -- without remembering to look often enough at the instructions. This is when I'm liable to get ahead of myself and miss one of those oh-so-intricate adjustments that a detail-minded designer like Nancy Bush is apt to make in her patterns (must shape the ankle just so). Or I may do something utterly silly like picking up the gussets along the heel flap without first turning the heel! No matter, a little backing up, a little re-knitting, and I'm safely on my way again.

Interestingly, the sophomore-oops phenomenon extends for me to other arenas as well. In cooking, the first time through a new recipe usually works fine. It's when I've made that dish a time or two already and think I have it licked that I'm more likely to run into trouble. I'll just glance at the recipe and skip merrily ahead a step or two, only to realize I've missed the stage when I was supposed to add a key ingredient. Oops.

All of which is to say, the second of the Gentleman's Fancy socks is now coming along quite nicely. :)

Giving Thanks

I'm thankful for the turkey we had for dinner this evening.
I'm thankful for the home to cook it in and welcome my family to.
I'm thankful for my family, near and far.
I'm thankful that so many of my dear ones live close enough to come and be with us for special times.



I'm thankful for my parents, brother, and sister-in-law- to-be, who arrive swathed in my handknits to show me they care.

I'm thankful for my other sister-in-law, brother-in-law, nephews, and niece, and their little dog too, with all their good cheer and happy commotion.

I'm thankful for the chance to guide my little niece's hands as she gives in to a growing curiosity about Aunt Cathy's spinning wheel.
I'm thankful for the happy corkscrews and fluffy slubs of the beginner's yarn she makes.

I'm thankful for a little quiet time once all the excitement and tumult are over.
I'm thankful for the chance, after a long day of hard work, to put up my feet and rest my back and knit a while.
I'm thankful for the husband who wants nothing more than for me to be happy.

I'm thankful for new things to discover and enjoy.
I'm thankful for the generosity, with their time and their knowledge, of the knitters and spinners I feel I've come to know through reading their blogs.

I'm thankful for the pleasant town I live in.
I'm thankful for this wonderful country, and I'm thankful for my chances to see other parts of the world.
I'm thankful for the awe-inspiring natural world.
I'm thankful that we can always hope and try for things to be better.