Anybody remember Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In?
New England is still sitting in a grey, gloomy funk and lots of places are still under flood warnings. It’s startling to drive up along the Merrimack or the Concord Rivers and see the trees on the banks standing with their feet and lower trunks in the water. Hopefully the rain will slow down and give the water time to recede some. That, and I am reaching the desperate-longing stage for some sunshine!
Last week I found a pattern on-line and all the reading and pondering I’d done about this particular subject sort of crystallized. Something in my pea-brain flashed and yelled, “This is it!”
I was going to try a sock.
I had a ball of Opal that had been ageing in the stash and when I ran into that pattern, I figured with that yarn and my two size 2 (US) circulars, now was the time. Except, of course, it didn’t work out quite that way.
I dug things out late Friday afternoon to get started. I brought my two circulars into the kitchen to briefly soak their cables in hot water - curly cables being problematic to knit with :) Got the first one done and grabbed the second only to discover that there was a needle at one end, a cable - and that was it! I was a little upset as these were ebonies that I had never even gotten to use. When I checked, yep, there was the second needle, still in the bag. It had broken off at the collar :( Poop.
Of course there was the shawl to work on (more about that in a minute) but I had spent a lot of time Friday searching for a pattern I felt capable of executing and was really geared towards making socks this weekend. Double poop.
The best and biggest craft store in the area is the A. C. Moore in Nashua - about 20 miles north of us. There is one closer than that but it’s tiny and I didn’t think my chances of finding a size 2 circular were very good at that particular shop. Do you have any idea what the traffic is like going north at 5:00 PM on a Friday afternoon? Bumper to bumper at 5 mph as far as the eye can see. Triple poop!
Never the less, I talked Myria into going out (you know how it is, right? It could have waited until Saturday, but you’ve got the momentum going for the project now!) and we headed north. I decided to take the back roads instead of the highway and the drive turned out to be not-so-bad. There were a couple of slow spots, but they weren’t that slow and we eventually reached the store in reasonably good time.
They did indeed have plenty of needles of the right type and size and they also had the new Lion Brand sock yarn, 75% wool, 25% nylon, washable and dryable and $5.99 for a 100 gm ball. So I picked up a couple of those too - purple, natch :)
Home again, I prepared my materials, sat down with my pattern and began.
This pattern requires a provisional cast-on. You know how they always tell you to use a smooth yarn for this? I didn’t have any that wasn’t around worsted weight and that just didn’t seem likely to work. Finally I discovered some peach fingering yarn and used that (with a size 1 crochet hook). That gave me the results I wanted in terms of size. However, when I later got to the part about pulling out the cast-on, I discovered that it had turned to velcro and was clinging desperately to my sock wool like an ardent lover :( I had to cut it off - a very tense-making procedure - but it did work. If I have to do this again, I’ll get a ball of crochet cotton to do it with :)
As of around 8:00 PM last night, this is what I had:
The first sock
The pattern can be found here.
I like the short-row toe very much as there’s no seam to annoy sensitive piggies and I found it simple to understand and relatively easy to execute. But I didn’t get far up the foot before I was cursing the circulars. It seemed that whichever needle I wasn’t using was always getting in the way of the needle I was using. So I switched over to DPNs (four size 2s and one size 1) for most of the foot. I switched back to the circulars for the heel because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep track of where I was on the DPNs.
That heel.
That !@#$%^&* heel!
I wound up knitting it over and over (that steady cussing you may have heard on Saturday night was me each time I had to frog that heel - again!) before I finally figured out what the pattern was trying to get me to do. Then it was easy; it’s always easy once you know how! And, of course, the circulars kept getting in the way and I couldn’t wait until the heel was finished and I could go back to the double points for the leg.
I like the legs of my socks to be ribbed - all the way up from the ankle. And I discovered that ribbing on the DPNs was a nightmare - at least for me. I am not the most coordinated soul on the planet and the purl stitches were killing me. Sigh. Back to the circulars. The ribbing is going a lot more smoothly now and I guess I’m getting used to avoiding the non-working needle because the whole megillah seems a lot less cumbersome than it did in the beginning.
BTW, I like the Lion brand sock yarn. It’s nice to work with and it’s a lot more economical than the designer yarns, lovely though some of them are.
I frogged the shawl. You may remember last week it looked like this:
Meadow Flowers - Garter Stitch version
Well, now it looks like this:
Meadow Flowers - Stockinette version
I’m also working it on larger needles and I like it a lot better. Somehow the only-knit version didn’t strike my eye as all that. It’s much happier with the knit-and-purl version. This will change the shape of the finished item somewhat, but neither I nor my eye are very concerned about that :)
The Red Baron
The Baron was actually visible this morning, so I took the opportunity for a little impromptu portraiture :) You wouldn’t think that somebody this bright could successfully hide in a 5 gallon fish tank - but he can do it. There have been times when Myria and I have taken the lid off the tank and stirred things up (very gently) just to make sure he was still in there!
Hope you all had wildly wonderful weekends, that the time change didn’t throw you off too much and that your impending weeks aren’t too arduous!
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All the wonderful knitting and The Red Baron aside, I’m just impressed by anyone who would even have a CLUE as to how to spell “megillah.”
LOL! I really haven’t a clue - that’s just my best guess :)
Look at that sock! Look at that sock! Good for you!!!! I think Mr. Red Baron should come and visit my Betta ladies. Once, I couldn’t find Pierre Escargot in his tank. I thought he “expired” and Jeff had removed him. I was nearly in tears. Then I thought I vacuumed him up with the gravel cleaner - but no, that was impossible. Finally found him. Hard to believe I’m so attached to a SNAIL! Jeff came home the other day, fed Pierre a skinned pea, and said, “You know, Pierre is the most fascinating member of the family.” I lose out to a snail - sheesh! Nice redux on the shawl. :)
Stasia - we get attached to all our animals too. One of our little catfish is around 7 years old. He still seems to be going strong, but I know when he passes, things will be a bit teary. And snails are fascinating - I love watching them drift gracefully around the tank!
Some of those little catfish can live an amazing long time. We have some of those little corys at the aquarium that are in their 20’s.
Your sock looks great! I like the Magic Stripe yarns, but be careful about how long you make the cuff if you want to get a pair out of one ball.
You can use worsted weight yarns for provisional cast ons for socks. I have a huge cone of Sugar and Creme white that gets used for dishcloths, and sock cast on’s. It doesn’t seem to make a difference.
Thanks for the advice about worsted weight yarn, Sarra! I’ve got lots of sugar and cream too and I’ll give it a try next time. It should make it alot easier to pick up those stitches :)
I bought two balls of the sock yarn - I have big feet and chubby calves :) Since the price was reasonable, I didn’t see a down side!
20 years? Really? WOW! He’s the old man of the tank now! That’s way cool :)
