Knitting the Blues

Conwy, At Last

Last spring, this happened. Some of you might remember, some not, go look. I'll still be typing away. clickety-clack!

Those partial socks sat in a bowl (cute, blue with sheep on it) atop my fiber stash for these last many months until I recently decided that the bowl should have another use. And apparently I was emotionally ready to frog the second sock. I've knit quite a few socks since then and was on a roll, so rip it, I did. Then, being very, very sure that I had five needles that were the same size I cast on with the recently frogged yarn and started again. And I wasn't happy. The yarn still looked different. Like maybe it was a different dye lot after all.* I was thinking that maybe it was just my knitting, I was just knitting differently, right? Plus, knitting with that kinky yarn (nope, I didn't wash out the kinks) was sort of bugging me. So I made two HUGE! decisions. HUGE! I tell you. I decided that first, I would start a second sock with the leftovers of the first sock and knit as far as I could before changing to what was left unkinked in the second sock ball. Second (and this is the really HUGE! decision), I was going to be happy with the sock whatever happened after that. (I get palpitations just thinking back on it!)

I was happy that when I changed to the first sock yarn that it wasn't my knitting or my imagination run wild, that the socks looked the same. Having dainty little tootsies, that ball took me all the way to the heel turn, where I had to switch to the second sock yarn. And, long story short, I was happy. I mean, I would have liked to have the yarns be the same dye lot. I'm thinking that isn't too much to ask actually. But I played the hand I was dealt and here you have it.

• Pattern: Conwy Socks, Knitting on the Road, Nancy Bush
• Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Jeans
• Needles: (heh)size 1s, finally
• Started: April ?, 2006
• Finished: November 15, 2006

This is the first pair of Lorna's Laces socks that I have knitted. I have lots of LL in my sock yarn stash, but this is the first I have knitted up. I love them so far, but I haven't worn them yet. But you just know that every time I wear them I will look at the color difference. That's just me. Like all mothers love their babies no matter what they look like, I will love these socks.

*I ordered this sock yarn from a big mail order company some time ago. When it arrived, only one skein had a tag on it. Hmmm...... Honest mistake? I wonder. I wondered when I opened the package about that, but whatever. I won't order from them again. The picture on that post in April shows the dye lot difference best, but here is a close up of the finished socks.

I'm glad to see that my feelings about welcoming my kids home are shared.  Wow!  Just when I thought I was a meany mom, you all come through for me and remind me I'm normal.  Hope you all made it through the weekend, we did.  But I was glad to send one back.  She forgot half of her belongings though, including her work clothes.  That means I get to see her again really soon......

It's funny how it is. Pete travels occasionally for his job, sometimes more than others, and there are sort of stages that we go through as a family. The separation and re-entry stages. First we miss him being here, but gradually we get used to being just the girls. We develop our own routines without the influence of testosterone, without the influence of his appetites, agendas..... We get in the groove. Don't get me wrong, we still miss him, but we adjust. Then.He.Returns. As much as I miss him, it takes a day or two to get used to him hanging around again. As it usually goes, we have just made the adjustment to separation or re-entry and WHAM! We have to adjust again.  Our own little emotional roller-coaster.

It turns out that it is a little different when the girls leave and return. They are usually gone a lot longer, so we get used to family life without one (or now two) demanding our attention, piling up their messes, their laundry, hanging out in our space. Of course, they still think of it as their space too.... Each time we have a child re-entry, Pete and I make a little wager on just how long it will take before I am ready to see them leave again. (It is just a phase-I usually get used to them too. Just in time for them to leave again.)

This past weekend we had a huge re-entry. Gillian returned late, late Friday after five and a half months in Melbourne, Australia. While I am not the mushy, sentimental type over these things (I look at all of it as what I raised them to do, namely, LEAVE!) I really did miss Gillian. When we dropped her off at Logan in July, for the first time I cried when we separated. For the whole ride home. I mean! I don't do that! I just knew that when she returned she would be so changed after the experience, that the young woman I was sending off would return a different one. And her return date was anticipated by me like Christmas was when I was a child. Despite all of that, Pete and I had our usual bet. How long would it take before I was ready to buy her passage back? How much would "culture shock" (who comes up with these things?) affect her and drive me batty? How much would her hanging around, watching tv, sleeping, talking, demanding my attention NOW! drive me crazy? Pete gave me 36 hours. I thought 48. I'm happy to say, that even though I was weak at 47 hours (there was a little bit of a melt down over a computer issue), I still don't want to send her back! We are talking SEVENTY-TWO HOURS, PEOPLE! Did I tell you all that Meagan is attending the New England Conservatory of Music this fall? She will be home for the Thanksgiving weekend. I think this might be a little too much adjusting for one week.

How much you want to bet that I was the only one at the gym the other day, sweating away while reading Spinning In The Old Way or Spindle Spinning from Novice to Expert? As if that isn't a bit odd for the gym, imagine the looks I got when I pulled out the camera......

Attention: Spinning (albeit very mediocre) ahead!

Time was, when this knitter came across a blog post that was all about that knitter's spinning I would scan and click. Moving right along. Nothing of interest for me there. So, as a convenience to those knitters that couldn't give a crap about spinning, I'll try to start the posts that are all about my spinning with a warning or disclaimer. That way nobody has to waste their time searching for the knitting. In this post there is no knitting. If we could have just one decent day to take a photo, there would be knitting, but as it is, I took this crappy picture of my crappy first skein of yarn. And I use that term very loosely. But for some reason I can't stop looking at it, and touching it, smelling it, walking around cradling it in my arms like a new baby, and showing it to my family-"Look! I made yarn!". I think you can imagine that the response to that has diminished over time. (Luckily I have a daughter returning from Australia soon-she will be a new victim!  Would it be too much to take it to the airport with me when we pick her up?) And, while I promise there will be more knitting, at least for a short time there will be more spinning. It remains to be seen if I really want to do this, but the trying out time is frustrating as hell a challenge that I am willing to give some time.

Here There Be Dragons

Here There Be Dragons, or Dragon Feet

• Pattern: Here There Be Dragons Socks by Theresa Walunas (aka Keyboard Biologist), available here
• Yarn: Koigu KPPPM
• Needles: size 1
• Started: October 31, 2006
• Finished: November 7, 2006

Lovely heels and toes!

The old maid in this story has persevered, showing another thing that comes with age: Dragon Scale Feet! Ha! Seriously though-this sock pattern is so clever and fun to knit. See how the pattern continues into the heel and toe? I love it. Here is another view of the heel, it is really difficult to take a picture of your own heel, especially when your lens is stuck on the macro setting. I knit the sock almost exactly as written swapping out the suggested toe for my usual short row toe. And I may have knitted the heel the same or differently, it calls for a short row heel and I ignored the instructions there, as I just know how to do that for me. I wish I had made the leg a pattern repeat longer, although I surely would have run out of yarn, so it is good I didn't think of it sooner, and to adapt to the short row toe I knitted and my gauge, I knitted the foot a half repeat longer than the pattern. I learned that I really prefer size 0s for socks, as my short rowing does not seem as tight as it usually is. I can live with it, but in the future...... These are my new favorite socks. (Poor Rib and Cable, they only had the distinction for a week!)

Is there anything as lovely on the feet as Koigu?

As The Whorl Whirls

It may come as a surprise to some of you to hear that I have a somewhat goal-driven personality. And you might not know this about me, but I can be single-minded sometimes. There are those that might tell you I live life with blinders on, heading straight toward the finish line with no regard to anything or anyone else that might be unfortunate enough to need my attention. For instance, when hiking, the summit is the goal, usually the quicker the better. Rest and water stops are taken when my hiking companions insist, and then our stop at the summit is usually brief. This isn't necessarily the best way to hike. This was proven to me recently when one of our hiking party fell behind and we had to stop and wait for him a couple of times. Luckily I had a sock in my bag (because you know us goal driven people, a second wasted and all that), the view was beautiful and the air crisp as we sat and rested, my knitting moving along in a wonderfully relaxed setting. While I was forced into this moment of repose, I glimpsed the pleasure of hiking for the sake of the hike, not the end of the hike. This single vision approach applies to most of the projects I take on, be they knitting, sewing, cleaning, excercise, dieting, saving money, spending money, walking, talking, reading, blogging, parenting....... To hear me tell it, it sounds like a drag, but really it isn't to me. Only when I am fighting the people and the attitudes toward my single vision (really family, it would expedite things quite a bit if you would just go.a.long with me. It is going to get done one way or another. My way saves us a lot of bitching. By me.) does it become a problem. To me anyway. That family I speak of, they might dissagree, but I am the one in charge.

It is no wonder then, when riding on the back of a motorcycle with the husband that I am often wondering what the point of it all is. Truly, the ride is the point. We rarely actually have a destination, save the one we make up to give ourselves a direction. Often it is a coffee place an hour or two away. Somewhere to stop, stretch, sip and then reverse. Every single time the question is in my mind, "Why do we do this?" At least in a car I would be knitting. But the focus of a bike ride is what is happening outside of yourself. You see everything, the mountains, trees, houses, oceans, beaches, well...life. In a car the focus is "in". For someone like me, it is really difficult to set my expectations on the ride, and while it is a challenge, I really enjoy those times and chase any thoughts of "I could be knitting my sock (or whatever is on the needles)" out of my mind. The ride is the goal. The ride. Just.The.Ride. No real destination, just emptying the mind to the ride.

Recently I have taken up spinning with a drop spindle. I have had an on again, off again interest in the craft, more off than on. It isn't the production of yarn that is spurring me on, I can buy plenty of yarn. I don't think it is the need to conquer a new craft either, it just doesn't feel that way to me. I am just drawn to it for some reason. (And not in the "sipping the juice" way that you might think, it doesn't feel at all like that to me.) While I really wanted to spin with a spindle I didn't have many around me to prove that it was worth the effort, most people move to a wheel rather quickly, and I didn't want that, yet. Watching Margene learn to and improve spindle spinning over the last year or so has inspired me, and on a ride with her from the fairground to our hotel in Rhinebeck she told me about a spinning class she had taken. The teacher said that spinning should always be entered into with an end product in mind. The goal of spinning should not be pretty little balls of hand spun yarn in a bowl, basket or vase adorning your coffee table, but some finished object. That object may change in the process, but the goal should be there. Margene said that up until then she had not approached her spinning in that way, and that class changed her thinking. Now, it seems like that teacher would be a woman after my own heart, doesn't it? I have been practicing my spinning for a little over two weeks. It is a two steps forward, one step back process for me, but I soldier on, Margene's words going over and over in my mind. Phrases like "one half hour of practice per day" and "don't worry about the yarn, just get the hang of the drawing while the spindle is spinning, the yarn will improve over time" and "it was after about a month of steady practice that I felt good about what I was producing". Those are my mantras. And I have no real goal. I mean, yes, I would like to spin a yarn and use it in a project that I love, but for now it is truly the process. It is meditative with no destination, like riding on the back of the bike.  And while I know myself well enough to understand that this may not always be true, that the product will inevitabley become the real reason for the spinning, for now it is just the spinning.  Of course, I should probably figure out how to get my singles off the spindle..........

Here There Be Scales.....Can You See Them?

Back in the day when dragons roamed the earth, spitting their fiery tongues at knitters, causing them to dream of new projects and yarn, a young (HA!) maiden, well, maid really, watched closely at the development of this sock pattern. Loving the pattern and the progression of it into the heel and toe she waited for the perfect time to cast on and face the dragon scales. Would she succeed in taming them? Or would the breath of the dragon send her running to save herself from flames and defeat?

It turns out that this maid had a difficult time wrapping her mind around the dragon scales. You see, it is a 32 stitch repeat pattern. Working on four needles, with one left to knit on, the pattern continues across two needles, the second needle being a mirror image of the first. This maid just could not get that into her head. After many socks where the pattern is repeated on every needle, it was a bit of hit or miss if she remembered to continue the pattern in reverse on the second needle. Sometimes she would catch her mistake mid-row and fix it. Other times she wouldn notice rows later that she screwed up and would have to make a visit to the castle's frog pond. The weather was lovely though, and she enjoyed the scenery. The first time. After a few false starts, the maid knit like the wind. And knit some more. She was looking for the scales. Where were they? Stripes she saw, scales? Not so much. Her knitter's logic (you know the logic-you use it too-if I just knit a few more rows......), and fighting her good sense, she knit and knit, waiting to see the scales, but only seeing stripes. While the stripes were beautiful, she really wanted to see scales. After an evening's real progress (you know, not counting the false starts) she had to give in to the reality of the stripe. It was not going to give it up for the scale.

Fortunately, years of preparing for the virtual surety of a wool upheaval, where the dragons might side with the sheep and make wool difficult to come by (or when her kids went to college and she couldn't afford it anymore), she had stashed much sock yarn and was able to open the dungeon doors to find another yarn that really wanted to become dragon scales. She had gone on to slay the dragon, obsessively actually. She hasn't been able to stop knitting the scales. And not one knight in shining armour need come to her rescue!  Yes, being an olde maide is not so bad.

**Because the maid knows that the reading subjects will want to know: Socks That Rock (ooops, can't find the tag)-and yes, the photo shows the scales a bit better than real life portrays them. The second, and preferred yarn is Koigu.

Driving Along, Minding My Own Business

And I see this:

Not Three Minutes from My House!! This could be very, very dangerous.............
If you know anything about it, let me know! I'm curiouser and curiouser.