Ditto socks for color and economy

I discovered Ditto sock yarn on my last LYS expedition. The same company that makes Pace yarns, which I appreciate for their nice masculine solid colors, makes Ditto to take the pace of Pace up a step. Ditto comes in nice masculine multicolors that are more entertaining for the knitter and still conservative enough for guys who like earthy solids.

The color I knit for my husband Vic is Bryce Canyon Black, with bands and interjections in black, cream, grey, and brown. We think it’s very cool. Like Pace, it’s 75% superwash merino, 25% nylon. My LYS sells it for $6.00/50g ball, not much more than Pace, which she sells for $4.00. Not bad at all for my husband’s new favorite socks.

Peacock socks, my most fun pair yet

I knit my tenth pair of socks from the “peacock” color in an animal series by Opal.  The yarn comes in a 100g ball.  The miracle of the ball is that the color bands in the two socks came out identical, from cuff to toe.  I used the easy open rib pattern for the leg and instep:

Rnds 1, 2, 3: *K2, P2*

Rnd 4: *YO, SSK, K2, P2*

As it happens, the socks sport a double bird motif.  Besides being the peacock color, I learned that the heel flap stitch I always use is called “eye of partridge.” It makes a strong, tight, interesting-looking heel flap.  The stitch is:

R 1: *Sl 1 pwise wyib, K1* Repeat

R 2: Sl 1 pwise wyif, P across

Whoops: This has been corrected to read Sl 1 pwise wyib for R 1. It originally read “wyif.”

 

A few updates

Lacking reliable Internet access, it is hard to update faithfully here. It’s not that I’ve been negligent with my knitting!

- About three weeks ago, I made a Big Mistake on my shawl. It was on a row with—yes, with the dreaded S1K1PSSO. I looked back at the row several inches before where I didn’t even try to correct it, gulped, and prepared to think backwards, hard. I could at least make a valiant effort not to have another row like that. And you know what? I figured out how to unravel it! (Don’t think I’m going to post a tutorial, though.) I’m no longer deathly afraid of messing up on S1P1PSSO rows! Just in time to finish this thing. No pictures available, but I have about six and a half inches to go. That’s about four more pattern repeats, and I typically do one per day. Still don’t know who the recipient will be (my grandmother’s birthday has, um, come and gone), but my mother-in-law seemed to like it a lot when she saw me working on it. . .

- Speaking of my mother-in-law, her grandmother-in-law (if I understand correctly) was an avid knitter. Guess who inherited her comprehensive stash of needles? Yes. I don’t think I’ll ever have to buy a pair again, unless I am really just craving bamboo (which is possible; these are all aluminum). There’s even a huge, I don’t know, size 23? plastic one. One—? Not really sure what that’s for. But in case I should ever want to knit socks (HAH), there’s a wide range of tiny needles, too. 

- I also made a headband (the decorative, not the winter-wear sort) a few weeks ago. It was modified from a pattern by SheKnits, which I made in a type of cotton that really didn’t work so well. I also don’t like wide headbands. So I used the lace pattern from a bookmark I’ve made several of, which I don’t have a link to. 

 

It’s already stretched, but I’m wondering if a run through the washer and dryer (in a mesh bag to protect it) wouldn’t help a bit?

That’s it. I know of two friends, one rather distant and only through my husband, who are expecting, but I’m not inspired by any of the baby patterns I have in stock. (The poncho patterns are cute, Lauren, just . . . I’m not there yet.) Any suggestions? They cannot involve socks, cables, picking up stitches (I have a totally useless tutorial), or extremely complicated lace. Or the like. Think mostly mindless.

Original socks for an original mom

 

This year marks a double milestone for my mother-in-law, Tennie: it’s her 75th year of life and her 50th year of motherhood.  So, I decided to knit her a pair of socks. 

I asked for her measurements and her favorite color.  She provided her measurements, with the caveat that she wasn’t one to baby things in the laundry–so, she said, “Make them LARGE.”  Her favorite color, she said, was “purple, aquamarine, whatever.”  So I found some Merino 5, a DK weight 100% merino yarn, with shades of purple, fuchsia, and aquamarine, and other greens and blues.  I knit the leg in a mixed rib–some 3×3, some 4×4, and some 1×1 ribs, just to make them original, because Tennie is most original.  And they are large, though I think they’ll fit her fine.  They’re chunky, being DK and knit on #5 needles, but they should keep her cozy year round in Oregon in her Birkenstocks.

Baby Biometrics, Araucania Supima, and a Bootie Pattern to Boot

UPDATE:  I measured Gabriel’s head and feet at his shower.  He is 24 days old and weighed over 8 lbs at birth.  His head circumference is 15″; foot and ankle circumference: 3-1/2″, and foot length, 3-1/2″.  The hat I made is large and the booties, made from the pattern below, are large now, but should fit fine in three months or so.  (CORRECTED from previous entry in which I mistakenly recorded 4-1/2″ for Gabriel’s foot and ankle cicumference and foot length–all should read 3-1/2″.  Sorry!)

 

My friend’s baby, Gabriel, was born in early April. For his shower this Saturday, I wanted to knit a hat and booties, and thought wool might be too warm–surely to goodness Spring is coming….I wear merino socks year round, but a lot of people I know have a bias against wool in warmer weather. Synthetics can be hot, but they do launder easily…but I wanted natural, soft cotton.

My LYS had Araucania Supima, a rich, thick hand-dyed cotton from Chile.  I had gradations of shaded blues, and I fell for it. Caveat: the label recommends dry cleaning or hand washing. But I decided on it over the kashmerinos and washables just because it felt so wonderfully soft and seemed so incredibly soft to the touch. Besides, I’m a pushover for natural fibers. After all, it’s as easy as washing your hands just to rinse the little things out and lay them out flat on the dryer while you’re drying the rest of the laundry.

I had a hat pattern in Ann Budd’s Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns, and I planned to design the booties. They would essentially be socks; all I needed were foot and ankle circumference and foot length measurements.

I began the hat and Ann Budd’s calculus seemed a little large. She contemplated a head circumference of 16-1/2 inches for a newborn. I thought, well, who knows, she must be right, so I cast on the 82 stitches required for my 5 st/inch gauge. It soon became apparent that the hat would look like a lampshade on Gabriel.

I thought, this book has been in print unrevised for years, so it must be all right; I just have no concept of a baby’s head size. While I was knitting and fretting over the bigness of the burgeoning hat, my husband researched infant head circumferences. Apparently newborns can span a 14-16 inch range. I was somewhat relieved, but balked again when Ann said to knit to 5″ for the crown. No way. I began the decreases at 4″. It looks like a baby hat, but it might fit him until he’s eight years old. This site has some basic head measurements.

 To size the booties, first I looked for a pattern online, but the patterns I found were useless: they didn’t provide any finished measurements, and they didn’t provide a gauge. They simply told me what yarn and needles to use, and I wasn’t using those.

I didn’t want to call my friend and ask her to take time out to find a tape measure and measure Gabriel’s feet. I could guess these were not the most organized days of her life, and suspected her only tape measure would be steel.

I always carry a tape measure with me in my bag, and I thought I’d see a baby at some point and just ask his mother if I could measure his feet. There were many opportunities; it was opportunism that I lacked. Somehow, even though a baby was propped up in a carrier on the counter at the grocery store right in front of me, I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask his mother if I could measure his feet. Some people might view it as a strange request.

Providentially, Wendy, who put the W in awesome, called for foot measurements on Wendy Knits. Hundreds of readers responded.

I decided the 5″ circumference and 4-1/2″ length looked fairly typical, and used those measurements with my gauge.

I made the hat and booties in a day. They look kind of big, but maybe they will fit Gabriel at 3-6 months. The wonderfully soft, thick cotton should keep him comfortable through November.

Once I have the gauge and critical measurements, I just knit the sock as I go without any charting. Here is a reconstruction of what I did to make the booties, written for sock knitters. I used Araucania Supima and #7 dpns, 5 sts/in. The finished length is 4-1/2″ and the measurements are based on a 5″ foot circumference, so you can adjust accordingly for your gauge.

BOOTIES

CO 24 sts on 3 or 4 dpns. Divide and join.

K2, P2 rib for 2-1/2″.

Divide sts onto 2 dpns, 12 for heel, 12 for instep.

Work heel flap in garter or St st or any stitch of choice for 4 rows.

Heel Turn: K across 8 sts, SSK, K1, turn.

Sl 1 pwise to get working yarn on right. P across 6, P2tog, P1, turn.

Sl 1 pwise to get working yarn on right. Knit to within one st of gap, SSK across gap, K1, turn.

Sl 1 pwise to get working yarn on right. Purl to within one st of gap, P2tog across gap, P1 if a stitch is left. These four rows complete the heel turn.

8 sts rem. K across the 8 heel sts.

Pick up 2 sts along side.

K across 12 instep sts on second needle.

With third needle, pick up 2 sts along next side and knit half the heel stitches onto third needle. 24 sts total on three needles.

Work around in St st for 4-1/4″.

Decrease 4 sts per round for next two rounds this way: Needle 1: Knit to last 3 sts, K2tog, K1. Needle 2: K1, SSK, knit to last 3 sts, K2tog, K1. Needle 3: K1, SSK, knit to end.

Graft remaining 16 sts together using Kitchener stitch.

 

 

 

 

Kitchener loops

I don’t know where they come from; I don’t know how these things happen.  I’m grafting along, thinking my sock is done to perfection, and sometimes, oops: loops.

A loop springs up sua sponte from my Kitchener stitching, and there is no tugging it out.  I have to take my tapestry needle to the wrong side, bring it up next to the loop, tack down the loop, bring the needle back down and up again…this is most vexing.  Does anyone know the cause of these loops?  Probably it’s just me.  As usual, the Cat pleads complete innocence.

 

Who knits grey socks?

Well, I do. I suppose if yarn companies wanted cute color names for marketing, they could always call grey, “Puget Sound Sky.” I often refer to the stormy Sound as “pewter”. Anyway, my husband likes grey; he’s always maintained a drawer full of grey socks, and I did fuss to my LYS for sock yarns in more masculine solids, and she responded with Pace’s “Vine,” among other conservative neutrals. Vic’s grey socks are actually Vine.

They aren’t your plain grey socks you can just buy anywhere of course. They’re superwash merino, they’re soft, they hug, and they’re nice to knit. I worked on this pair at home, in two different car dealerships while waiting for answers and service during our recent two-week car shopping trek; I knit them in our old Buick, and in our new-for-us Audi.

This is the third pair of socks I’ve knit for my husband, and these are the best-fitting socks yet. The stitch down the leg and instep is the ultra-easy Garter Rib, which is,

Rnd 1: K2, P2

Rnd 2: K

A nice thing about a two-round pattern like this for a sock is that you can easily keep track of decrease rounds and plain knit rounds of the gusset by which stitch pattern is on the instep needle.  I ended with a K2, P2 row on the instep needle when I began the heel flap.  When it was time to pick up gusset stitches, I knit across the instep.  The next round was a decrease round for the heel stitches, and a K2, P2 round on the instep.  Rnd 1 of the instep stitches always corresponded to a decrease row for the heel stitches, and Rnd 2 of the instep stitches corresponded to a knit row for the heel stitches.  The evens and odds matched. 

But mistakes are still possible.

On Saturday, our anniversary, I was knitting the foot of the second sock, riding in the car to Ocean Shores. I noticed a car in the next lane with a bumper sticker that read, “Make Gloves, Not War.” Amen, sister. It’s probably a good thing we both had tinted windows; otherwise, I’d have held up my sock and beseeched my husband to honk.

Now for my true confession: ultra-easy means easy to err as well as easy to execute. All it takes is doubling up on one round with the same stitch pattern, and the rib pattern is offset. It could be done this way on purpose, yielding an offset pattern I’ve seen in tile. But I did not do it on purpose, and the leg and instep junction is the site of the offset on one sock.  I was a couple of inches from the scene of my inattention when I noticed, winging as I was through the gusset decreases and the doldrums of the foot. I was in the car, not an optimal place for frogging and picking up. I didn’t say anything.

We arrived at a pleasant bird refuge on our way to the coast, and were walking along the silent boardwalk beneath rain drops dripping from mossy overhead branches. I had to say something.

“I have to tell you something. It’s going to ruin your whole anniversary, but you might as well know.”

“Hmm?”

“Ioffsettheribbingonyoursock.”

“I love offset ribbing. I like tile laid that way, too.”

“But if it were for anyone else, I’d do it over.”

“Don’t even think of doing it over! It is a wonderful sock, a precious sock. It will fit, it will hug, it will be perfect. No one else will ever see the ribbing in my boot!”

“Okay. Because I really need to finish it and make a hat for Gabriel, and your mom’s socks for mother’s day. And I need time for those in case I screw up and have to redo anything. And I can’t stand to start something else until I finish what I’m working on.”

“Don’t frog my sock! I love it the way it is.”

“Okay.”

I brought up the Calvinist ethos of doing things as well as possible, and my husband countered with the Calvinist ethos of the value of time.

This goes more to the kind of husband I have than the kind of knitter I am. I really do like to do things right. I have frogged inches of sock and entire socks before. But these socks are the way they are: grey, warm, soft, huggy, and loved, and one has offset ribbing.  And they match the Cat.

A softer, warmer Darth Knitter

When I made my first pair of gloves, I was convinced it would also be my last. Knitting them was a fairly simple matter, but the inter-digital gusset clean-up was tedious. Each finger’s tail becomes the thread used to weave the gap between its finger and the next.

But then a good friend of ours mentioned how his hands became cold in his study, and sort of motioned the idea of fingerless gloves. I redesigned the basic pattern to correspond to ergonomic gloves, with finger anchors for thumb, index, and little fingers, with a large hole for the middle and ring fingers, and knit Saguaro. He was pleased with them (“They work” is a high compliment from a Calvinist), and I thought I’d like a pair as well.

My husband and I have been test-driving cars, and the persisting cold spring weather and the desire to have my fingers sensing the controls in their different places made the desire for fingerless gloves a practical necessity. I knitted each glove in a day.

The circumference of my hand is 7″, and I managed the pair with one 50g ball of Sublime 100% Superfine Merino DK, 127 yards the skein, with an extravagant 7 yards left over–and I left long tails for weaving the gaps. Always do this: with cutting the thread after completing a finger, leave plenty of yarn–maybe 8″, for cleaning up the gaps. You don’t want to join another strand when it isn’t necessary, and it isn’t.

The gloves are wonderful; I am typing with them now. I suspect they will take less moisture from my hands than my lycra ergo gloves. The original Saguaros I made for our friend are dark grey; mine are dark taupe.

So, three pairs of gloves when I thought I’d never make another pair…I began contemplating whether I have the glove gene. My mother’s father was a tailor, and my father was a draftsman turned design engineer. I remember him coming home with a celebratory case of Coca Cola when I was three years old; he’d been hired by a defense lab to design cannons and mortars.

I didn’t inherit that trait, but maybe there’s a shred of the peptide in my affinity for knitting, the success of which relies on proportional relationships, numerical bounds, and accurate execution. Perhaps my grandfather the tailor contributed a bit toward my fascination with knitting, a means of creating and shaping fabric at the same time.

Whatever the trait and wherever it comes from, so far this year I have completed a sweater, seven pairs of socks, and three pairs of gloves. May the Lord be pleased to permit me to keep the wooly blessings coming, always with improvements.

I have reached. . . the end of eternity

This baby blanket, knit with 3 skeins of Lion Homespun yarn, was a piece of busy work from the time before my knee surgery in November to now, a little over a week into marriage as a stay-at-home wife, totalling about 5 months. It really only seemed eternal  when I reached the halfway point and thought about all the hours spent on the first half. But for the most part I enjoyed my first long-term, major project, which I have deemed gift-worthy for the next friend who becomes pregnant, or the next pregnant woman who becomes a friend. If it looked awful my own firstborn would have had to bear it, because I’m proud. A saint I know makes shawls and gives them away even if they have a few mistakes, because she knows the various recipients believe in the thought counting more than the gift’s perfection. 

Now it’s back to dishcloths and headbands for a while, methinks. I may be employed shortly anyway, and my husband doesn’t directly benefit from baby blankets. Not that he really benefits from headbands. One could make a good case for dishcloths, though. 

P.S. The afghan in the picture was a wedding gift—to quote the giver, “a little something meant as an engagement gift”—from one of my mother-in-law’s good friends, and my husband’s kindergarten teacher. It is cloud-soft, not “just a little something” but a careful work of art, and I hope this blog’s proprietess won’t mind me including a shot of some crochet work. 

It’s tulips!

Mocha

Here are my “stash browns,” dubbed “Mocha.”  The main color is the chocolate Pace yarn I used for my husband’s “Chocolate Mint” socks; the cuffs and heels are the Schurwolle variegated yarn from “Laura’s Socks,” and the toes are the Pace taupe of “Jane’s Bluebell Socks.”  Like my “Stash blues,” I made these identical.  This time I was confident of my yarn supply, but I made them on two sets of dpns, going back and forth after every structural section, rather than every several rows.  It really is nice to finish them within a day or a few hours of each other–the total cure for Second Sock Syndrome.  The leg and instep are done in a K3, P1 rib, which I find attractive; it fits nicely, and I can carry on a conversation while knitting it.  If I make a mistake, it’s so much easier to tink off and correct than a lace pattern.  Since I wear khaki chinos a lot, I’m sure these are about to become my new favorite socks.