Heels and Toes

I'm relatively new to the world of sock knitting, so I've been spending a lot of time trying to determine the "best" way to do things. This research has turned up something fabulous: Knitters will draw blood over their preferred method of knitting heels and toes. Just take a look at the internet - it's all out there. Short row heels, hourglass heels, flap heels, cuff down, toe up, magic loop toes, short row toes, kitchener stitch toes. All of these methods work, and all of them are despised by somebody. Heels and toes. If you like one method, you have to hate all the others with a violent passion, and kill everyone who does it a different way.

Which leads to my next thought: I'm afraid I'm a sock slut. I like doing a flap heel if it fits nicely with the design. Otherwise the hourglass method (in the photo above I've used the one from the Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook) looks fine...once I do it over THREE FREAKING TIMES to get it right, but that's a user error, not an inherent problem with the method. If the pattern allows or I'm just making a generic sock without using a pattern at all, I'll use the figure 8 or "magic cast on" (as featured on Knitty.com) to work from the toe up, so I don't have to graft the toe stitches together later...but if I see someone making a sock from the cuff down, I'm not going to stab her with my knitting needles.

Also, could someone explain sock blockers to me? Apparently when you finish your socks, you have the option of blocking them on wooden sock-shaped forms. But those big, flat forms have nothing to do with the shape of the human foot. My feet, like all other feet, are thick, flat and wide; they are not shaped like two-dimensional Christmas stockings. How does stretching my sock out in this way create something that is remotely comfortable to wear? Seriously, I have to know why people do this. 

Bad Idea?

It's fun to have one huge project on the needles and several smaller, more portable ones, and I have no Epic-In-Progress at the moment. I mentioned in my last post that my next Epic Project will involve dyeing, spinning and knitting a sweater for myself.

There's no getting out of it now, as I've already completed Stage 1: Buying The Wool.
However, a small concern has been gnawing at me. See, I have knit only FOUR sweaters in my life and three out of four were utterly unwearable. Considering the statistics, it's highly likely that I'll be doing all this dyeing and spinning for nothing.

I SO can't wait to get started!

UPDATE: When I got to work today, my wise and clever friend Jennifer suggested that in honor of my Epic Project, we should have gyros (lamb) for lunch today - her theory being that eating the young of what I will spin will give me power and insight. She's brilliant! I shall fortify myself with gyros!

Saturday Spinning Report

Yesterday was a busy day. My mom and my knitting friend Jennifer and her little munchkin, Bailey, went allll the way out to the Yarn Barn in Lawrence to buy new wool for my next epic project. (We've all decided I should spin my own yarn for a sweater - more on this later.) Then, after much fun and goofing off (and watching Bailey try to lick Mickie Dog on the nose after learning that this is the proper way to commune with dogs), I did Lots And Lots of Spinning. First, I finished up a second skein of Muppet Entrails. Then, I attacked some wool that my mom had dyed.

Spinning this wool was no easy feat. First, I had to get past this:

Scary, huh? I felt like an epic hero battling a cyclops, or some far scarier beast, while trying to wrestle the wool out from under my 30 pound monster cat. Look at him. He's evil. And possibly drunk.

Finally I managed to pry Angus from the wool and distracted him by carrying him across the house to the kitchen and dazzling him with food. At last, congratulating myself on my victory, I returned to my spinning corner to discover this:

Sigh.

Needless to say, it was a late night. However, I did achieve a skein of mom-dyed wool. She failed to name her color design before she left, which I think she'll regret, because I have decided to call it Fishguts. Pictured here are Fishguts (upper) and Muppet Entrails (lower):

In other news, Jennifer has also dyed some wool for me to spin for her. It looks, oddly enough, identical to the Muppet Entrails fiber. She would like to announce the name of this colorway as Muppet Entrails II.

Some of you may remember that I decided Sunday would be Finish What You Started Day. I guess I'll have to report on that tomorrow, as Sunday isn't over and I've accomplished exactly nothing so far.

The Conquering of Tofutsies

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently bought this sock yarn, and it really gave me a hard time when I started knitting with it.

I guess "having a hard time" isn't really the way to describe it; maybe "writhing in the seventh pit of hell" would more accurately convey the experience I had.

See this blurry sock? (Dug. New camera. Please.)

I cast on this sock, using the figure-8 cast on so I can knit from the toe up and not have to graft it later, SEVEN TIMES. The first couple of tries, the cast on just wasn't working right. (It's tricky, okay?) Then I knit about 12 rows and discovered that I'd somehow knit a huge stupid hole in the middle of the toe. How the heck did I do that? Geez.

So I ripped it out, started over, and got about 20 rows into it when the yarn started coming off the ball broken - not all the way broken, but with bits of the plies split and sticking out all over the place. This yarn is cool because it's made with several different sock-friendly fibers, including chitin (chitin, pronounced "kai-tin" comes from shellfish and crab shells), which is naturally antibacterial and gives the yarn a unique sheen. Unfortunately, it rather forcefully sticks to itself when it pulls off the ball, possibly because of the chitin, and I think that was causing the little plies to tear in places.

Anyway, there was no way to hide the broken plies in the fabric...so again, I ripped it out. I restarted it again, and again, each time having irritating splitty-ply problems. I nearly gave up on it. I threw it down and pretended to ignore it while gazing longingly at it when it wasn't paying attention, like a bad boyfriend.

I decided I would give it one more shot, and FINALLY, I beat the sneaky, evil Tofutsies yarn into submission. My casting on stopped being retarded. The plies stopped breaking. (There were actually a couple of weird oddities where one of the plies would be sticking way out and looped around itself, but I hid them in the knitting and we shall never speak of them again.) Check out that sock toe. That is a sock toe of the gods. It even looks good on the cat.

I'm not naive, though. Sure, things are going well now, but I know it will betray me again. I'll get halfway up the leg and suddenly there will be more splitty terror. Or something worse. It's going to let me down, again and again, but I'll keep buying more because it's just so darn cute.

wii interrupt this program...

If I could get a picture to load this morning, I would show you a triumph of will over yarn. Evil yarn. Yarn that was kicking my ass, but that I overcame and forced into submission in the form of a sock. But, no picture. No triumph. Just fragmented sentences.

Dug brought home a wii from work last night. For some reason, I didn't accomplish much knitting. It turns out that it is really hard to knit and play wii sports bowling at the same time. 

Look!

I accomplished a lot of stuff this weekend. I spun on Saturday, and then decided that henceforth, Sunday shall be "Finish What You Started Day." In that spirit, I shall show you what I finished on Sunday. First, my "Azure Socks" from this winter's issue of Knitty, designed by Deb Barnhill. These socks are, so far, my favorite thing that I have ever knitted. LOOK, they fit! And LOOK - the design goes up the back. Isn't that clever? So cute.

Deb was going for a nautical theme in her design, but I used fuzzy yellow Frog Tree alpaca yarn, which makes my socks look like wheat. Which is appropriate because I live in Kansas, don't you think?

Next, I finished Dug's mitten.
Unfortunately, Dug insists that having a PAIR of mittens is really the way to go. Despite my better judgment, I have started the second mitten, and am noticing something alarming. I was sure that my second batch of first-time-spinner mitten yarn was just as crappy as the first. But it is not. It is lovely. My first mitten is a bulky mess of thick-and-thin fiber, which would be fine if the second mitten matched it. The second mitten is softer, with elegant, perfectly even little stitches and visible, tidy increases in the shaping of the fingers, which would be fine if the first mitten matched it. The only thing these two mittens will have in common is size and color. (By the way, I'm not using a pattern - I just did a figure-eight cast on and kept knitting until it looked like a mitten.) I am wondering if I have enough fiber left to make a third mitten that might resemble the second more closely than the first.

Finally - and I was saving this for last because I am SO proud of myself - I have spun and plied one skein of yarn in the Muppet Entrails colorway. (Thanks to Maxim for the name.) The fiber is a South African top - I have no idea what that means, but it is incredibly soft. It is not very even, but LOOK. Look how pretty it is!

I am so cool.

Snow Day & Shelf Assembly!

Today there was snow. I hate snow, so I stayed home. Dug also stayed home, so I made him help me assemble the bookshelves. (You know, the ones I bought instead of hinge pins?) Everyone else in the house helped with the assembly, too. Here is Angus helping me read the instructions:

Yes, I AM wearing Dr. Pepper pants. Why do you ask? No, that is NOT my real nose. I don't know whose nose it is, or how it got on my face, but it is most certainly not mine. Nor is that gigantinormous forehead.

And here is every single beast in the house assisting Dug with the shelf construction:

Here I am sitting in front of the completed shelves (yay!), painstakingly drafting some wool, so I could very carefully, slowly, and with much concentration FOCUS on controlling the twist in my yarn...before I gave up and spaced out and just fed it on the bobbin with no regard to structure or twist and it was just as uneven as ever.
I filled up a bobbin about halfway with yarn, and then Dug and I each took about 50 pictures of it. Every single picture we took was blurry. How could we have taken 50 blurry snapshots? Then I noticed something. Nothing else in any of the pictures is blurry. Only the yarn. So I took a good close look at the yarn, and...it's blurry. So, this picture is actually in focus; it's just a shot of blurry yarn: I'm going to spin up another one of these and ply it. Who knows how it'll turn out, but this single seems a lot more even and consistent than my last session, so hopefully we'll see a difference in the 2 ply.

Probably it'll be real blurry, though.

Someone has been pooping in my guest room.

Tonight's goal? Clean out THIS room...

...so I can have a quiet, non-dog-headbutting place to spin. I just got home from work and, being the responsible and dedicated housekeeper I am, immediately set about tidying up. I picked some rubbish and moved a box over and there it was. Poop. A lot of poop. A huge stash of poop. Al Capone's secret vault of poop.

I pride myself on my sleuthing abilities. In another time and place, I could have made it as a film noir style detective. I like saying things like "broads" and "dames" and "the game's up, buster," and other stuff I imagine film noir detectives would say. (Although, now that you mention it: NO, I guess I haven't actually watched any film noir detective movies. Why do you ask?)

Anyway, the point is: Nobody hides contraband poop in MY guest bedroom and gets away with it. I'll get to the bottom of this. (Get it? Poop? Bottom?)

So far, there are too many potential culprits to identify the offender with total certainty. (Jennifer, when you came by on Saturday, did you happen to poop in my guest bedroom seventy-three times? How 'bout you, Mom?) Only forensic examination will tell me for sure who did it.

HOWEVER, I have my suspicions.

Lefty

I once took a quiz that showed whether you were right-brained or left brained. The results had a top-view picture of a brain with a quadrant graph superimposed on it, and a dot plotted on the graph to illustrate your brainededness. If your dot was plotted front or back, that meant something important (that I've totally forgotten), and if it was right or left, that meant you were creative or logical. My dot was dead-freaking-center.

I've always done the art thing, but truth be told, I come at it from a very left-brained angle. I see my projects a series of problems to be solved, like a puzzle. Lately I've gone blank on the painting (embracing apathy as a way of life is fine and dandy, but sure makes it hard to come up with passionate ideas to paint about - I can only render so many still lifes of vases and fruit), so I've turned to fiber. Knitting and spinning seem to be the right thing for me, because whether my fickle brain is feeling leftish or rightish, I can find a fiber-related activity to satisfy it.

Left-Brain Carey is driving today. My first spinning session resulted in the above hank of yarn, and a lot of questions. While I realize that spinning even, consistently twisted yarn and understanding when to adjust the tension on my wheel are things that will come with time, they are still puzzles. Puzzles have solutions, and solutions come from the internet.

Therefore, I spent the whole damn day reading the internet. I read about controlling twist and adjusting the Scotch tension on my spinning wheel. There are a lot of helpful articles out there. There are three thousand times as many articles that suggest that, "too much twist is bad" and "not enough twist is bad" and "if the tension is off, that's bad". Well, gee, that's helpful. I'm the kind of person who wants to know EXACTLY how many twists per inch I need in the weight of yarn I'm making, and EXACTLY how much fiber should go into the single as I draft, and EXACTLY how much I should adjust the tension and when and where I should tighten or loosen it, and the best answer I've come up with is "adjust as necessary." I'm coming to learn that there IS no "exactly" in handspinning. I might have to go breathe into a paper bag for a minute.

Or, heaven forbid, stop being cheap buy a book.

Frustration

See this?














To the untrained eye, this might appear to be a sweet little doggie. (The one dressed as a bumblebee is the dog. The one in the penguin pants is my husband. Yes, we always dress like this around the house. Why do you ask?)

Do not be fooled. It is a feral MONSTER who insists on repeatedly ramming his head into my spinning wheel every time I try to use it. Because new things must be headbutted. Constantly.

I didn't make this rule, and I don't understand it. I just do what the dog tells me.

We have a guest bedroom, but we had taken the door off the hinges and hidden it in the garage. Why, you ask? Because my father, rest his soul, had painted it fluorescent magenta. Trust me, it was easier to hide the door than just paint it. You can't imagine how many coats of kilz it is going to take to cover that throbbing neon color. "Why don't you have a door there?" people sometimes ask us. "Oh, someone stole it," we say, rather than admit the painful magenta truth.

However, to solve the wheel-butting issue, I had this bright idea that I would go to the hardware store after work today and buy new hinge pins (because, for some reason, we discarded these), hang the door back in its place and then I would have a nice, closed-off place to use my spinning wheel. Guests to our home are usually announced, so if we're expecting anyone I figure I can just unhinge the door and stash it in the garage again, under a tarp in case anyone goes snooping around.

This was a fine plan. Except, after I got home from shopping I realized that I had purchased bookcases, not hinge pins.

The bookcases, once assembled, will be a fine addition to the guest bedroom. They are not hinge pins, but they are NEW. Newer than the spinning wheel. So perhaps I can set them up and the dog will headbutt them instead of my wheel while I am trying to use it.

Not Bad

I don't seem to be wasting any time actually LEARNING how to spin. Yesterday I went on a "yarn crawl" with my friend Jennifer and bought some more fiber to practice with. Then my mom and I decided to dye the fiber. So we did, using the koolaid-and-microwave method. It turned out, in my opinion, pretty darn cool. It looks like tie dye right now, of course, but will look nothing of the sort once it's spun up.

While we weren't dyeing, I obsessively made 120 yards of 2 ply swalesdale wool. It's very coarse, but made my first marathon spinning session very easy. The fibers are very long and draft easily, making them a good choice for a beginner to learn with.

As I was told to expect, the yarn is not terribly even - there are thick and thin places in the yarn because I'm not experienced enough to keep the twist distributed evenly throughout the fiber as I go. The skeins (I made two) range consistently from DK to bulky worsted. I have read many suggestions that this yarn should not be discarded, but labeled "Designer Yarn" and sold for a high price. At first I was Appalled by the quality and was going to stash it under the bed and try to forget about it, but my husband encouraged me to knit a swatch.

Here is the swatch:


I have revised my opinion. The thick-and-thin texture, once knitted, is not appalling after all. It is darling. The astute will notice that the swatch has become a man's sized mitten. We will not call the mitten "darling" once I give it to Dug. We will call it "masculine" and "rugged".

Wheel Pictures

I received a number of urgent requests for pictures (ONE is a number, after all - thanks, Maxim), so here they are.

Arrival of the spinning wheel:

Figuring out the spinning wheel:


And finally, my first mess of practice yarn:

I got a spinning wheel.

I've been knitting for a while now. Every year for a decade I've completed a few simple projects here and there, the odd Christmas gift and the occasional ineptly constructed sweater. I enjoyed it, but inevitably put down the needles after each project in favor of other pursuits. Then it hit me. In the past few months I've gone through The Transition knitters sometimes talk about. You know, that metamorphosis from Casual Knitter to Raving Obsessed Knitter.

Well, the worst happened. I've become so fascinated with yarn that...I got a spinning wheel. My family got it for me for the holidays. My mom and I did the research and decided on a cute little Ashford Kiwi. Just to see if I liked it. Just to see if I could get the hang of it. I received it from UPS just last night, assembled it, and I DID get the hang of it (photos of Travesty Yarn to follow). It is just as wonderful as I imagined it would be. After my husband Doug, it is the best thing that ever happened to me. 

That's how I've ended up starting a blog. 

You see, I couldn't wait to tell everyone at the office about my marvelous experience.

So I did. When the first unsuspecting victim wandered into my cube for morning chit chat, I clapped my hands childishly and announced, "I got a spinning wheel!" She looked at me for a few seconds, blinking irritably, and responded, "What's a spinning wheel?" I was deflated. I tried explaining it to her, but it only got worse. The conversation ended with her asking me, "Why would you want to make YARN?" 

I tried it again. I spotted a friend in the hallway. She started telling me about her day. "Aha," I thought. I waited, impatiently bouncing on my toes, until she asked, "How are YOU doing?" Grinning, I told her, "I got a spinning wheel!" Her nose wrinkled. Her eyebrows got closer together. "What's a spinning wheel?"

"Nevermind," I said. 

I was feeling disturbed at this point, but I put it out of my mind. One can't assume that every fellow woman is fascinated with fiber arts. I moved on. Then yet another coworker instant messaged me. THIS was a friend I had shown knitting projects to. She would understand.

"I got a spinning wheel!" I told her. She said, "ipod?" Huh? "Er, no," I said, "A spinning wheel." A minute passed. Then she replied, "Is that an ipod?" I briefly considered gouging out my left eye with my letter opener, but thought better of it. I told her, "No, it's a spinning wheel." Another minute passed. Then she asked, "What's a spinning wheel?" 

Oh for #$#$'s sake. 

So that, my friends, is what has drawn me, a non-blogger, to the internet: The realization that I have no one to frikkin' talk to. 

Hey, anyone who's listening? I got a spinning wheel.