I finished the Sea-Camo-Weedy socks last night. In the end, I did not frog out the foot and start over again. Usually I’m a stickler for fixing knitting boo-boos. But this time I decided that it just didn’t matter that much. There’s so much going on with the colors that the only part of the stitch pattern that’s really visible is the wavy rib — and that I did OK. The purl stitches get lost in the shuffle.

I actually decided that I like the way it looks because the mistake-stitch seaweed on the foot has a shorter period in its wave because the purl sections are closer together as they move from right to left and back. The shorter wave fits in nicely with the whole foot-vs-leg thing. The stripes are narrower, the waves are shorter. Yeah.

Gentle reader, what are the chance that anyone would buy a story that I meant it to come out that way?

I didn’t think so.

But here is yet another reason to knit both of your socks at the same time, whether you do it from the top or the toe: You make the same mistakes in each. I would have hated to have had to try to recreate my goofs. Of course they are not consistent from one goofy pattern repeat to the next. Each repeat is unique unto itself. Until the ankle, where I actually did it right.

So here they are, posing amongst my cherry trees, in bloom right now. There was just enough good light this morning in to get this picture before the gloom descended. As I type this they are on my feet and they fit perfectly.

The particulars:

• Yarn: Blue Moon Socks That Rock – medium ( 100% Superwash Merino/ 380yds/5.5 oz per skein) in colorway Monsoon. This was the first Rockin’ Sock Club skein of the year. I had some left over. I understand that others didn’t. I did not knit the pattern. Sometimes I don’t follow directions well.
• Needles: Knitpicks Classic circulars, US#1 (2.5mm), and then Addi Lace circulars, US#1 (2.5mm) — vastly prefer the Addis. They rock.
• Pattern: my own standard sock pattern. The stitch pattern is called Seaweed in Barbara Walker’s Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns.
• Techniques used:
  • Knit toe-up, two at a time, on double circulars.
  • I used the Magic Cast On.
  • The heel flap is worked in heel stitch with garter borders.

Speaking of trees blooming, when I left Tangle on Saturday it was windy and the blossoms were blowing off of the tree. It was almost like driving through a blizzard of pink snow. It was really lovely.

I tried to get a picture, but I’m not sure if I captured how beautiful it was. Today, of course, it is raining and gloomy. Be sure to click on the pic to get the bigger version, where it’s easier to see the blossom-snow.

Some Mountain Colors Bearfoot in colorway Moose Creek started yelling at me from the stash, demanding to be knit into socks. Right now. Preferably lace socks. And it will need to be a strong lace to handle the deep, dark, rich colors in the yarn. I can tell already this will be hard to get a good photo of.

I try not to argue with my yarn. But I can’t believe it’s already almost April and I’ve only finished three projects this year — all socks. So much for my resolution.

Judging by the number of hits I’ve had the last few days (thanks, Dave, for the shout-out), most people are not concerned with spoiling their Rockin’ Sock Club surprise. (My ball band says “Sure Footed” inside. Alas, if only that were true!)

So this is what I’m doing with my skein of Monsoon.

Obviously I’m not following the lovely pattern that was included in the February shipment. There are a couple of reasons for this. As a general rule I’m not very good at following directions anyway. But I also have narrow feet with high arches. Short-row heels just don’t fit my feet very well. So I am concerned that socks that fit my feet would be pretty tight to get on with those cables on the legs.

I was going to work a stitch pattern that Barbara Walker calls Seaweed, but after seeing the yarn I discarded that idea as not what I was really looking for. My next thought was to work the Tipsy Knitter stitch pattern over the sock. But about an inch into the toe I realized that just wasn’t going to work. So I fell back on plan A. This is Seaweed. It does look sort of seaweedy, eh?

But what it really looks like is… camo. You can see as it poses with my little camo project bag that it blends right in. I will have to be careful not to lose them.

Like I lost the Tangled socks, which still haven’t shown up! I have quizzed #1 Son for a second time, and the conversation went something like this:

Mom: Are you sure you haven’t seen my socks?

#1 Son: Why would I have your socks? When would I have seen them?

Mom: Are you sure they didn’t get mixed in with your laundry?

#1 Son: Did you want me to look? I supposed I could do that

Mom: YES!!! Looking would be a good thing!

#1 Son: OK. I’ll get back to you on that.

sigh

On a totally different note, don’t forget that we (in the USA) spring forward to Daylight Savings Time three weeks early this year. I’m not really looking forward to (1) losing an hour of sleep and (2) having it dark when I wake up. But unfortunately the powers that be did not consult me when this decision was made. So remember when you wake up this coming Sunday, the time has changed and your clock needs to also.

You should also visit the web site of the operating system for your computers and hand-held devices. Apple and Microsoft have both published patches so that the hour changes automatically on the right date. And Palm covered my brain (aka Judy’s Palm), with an easily applied patch.

Download the fix directly from the manufacturer. Don’t believe the emails from unknown third parties that promise to fix all your problems. In most cases they will cause other problems that you didn’t expect, like virii and phishing. Please compute safely.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled knitting blog…

Ordinarily when I start a pair of socks, I’m fairly careful about the stitch I pick for the instep and ankles. It has to work with, not compete with, the color. The pattern repeat must divide into the total number of stitches without a remainder. Or, alternately, the pattern repeat should be wide enough that it won’t look weird used on the front and back and combined with a different pattern on the sides. It’s not that hard to figure out… usually.

I wanted a feather-and-fan variation for these socks. The one I chose — k2, m1, k1, m1, k2, sl 1, k2tog, psso — worked pretty well with the color in the yarn. I just needed to tweak it a little to make it fit. K2tog on each side instead of the double-decrease used elsewhere across the instep. Yeah… that was the ticket. We’ll come back to that later, gentle reader. I usually plan a little better.

I was really happy with the Eye Of Partridge stitch on the heel flaps. You can see a side view at the top of the picture on the left-hand sock, and the whole heel flap on the folded right-hand sock. EOP looks so cool with multi-colored yarns, and fits in with the whole bird theme, dontcha know. So clever of me.

Then I finished the heel flaps and it was time to extend that lovely pattern to the back of the legs.

Remember how I tweaked the stitch pattern just a bit to make it fit across the instep? There’s this funny thing about decreases: If you want the total number of stitches to remain the same, each decrease must be paired with an increase. That tiny tweak on the sides meant that the increases and decreases were paired and all was right with the world. But, if I knit exactly the same pattern on the back as I was knitting on the front, I would have two double-decreases next to each other on the sides. Ick.

I wanted the socks to be symmetrical. I didn’t want the double-double-decreases on each side. So, as I rounded the turn from front to back, I moved one stitch from back to front and changed the k2tog to a sl1, k1, psso. And I confidently headed off across the back… k2, m1, k1, m1, k2, sl1…

You can see it coming can’t you, gentle reader?

I got all of the way across the back of the first sock before I realized what was going to happen. The original instep pattern had two stitches decreased over four stitches. I changed that a bit so that two stitches were decreased over three stitches. Twice. And that meant that there were two extra stitches there.

I stared at the offending sock in disbelief. Two extra stitches? Why? Oh yeah… I see why. Oh @#$%. Well… that was the least of what I said. I suddenly felt not so clever. Not clever at all.

I got out graph paper and started charting. I could either decrease two stitches in the back to make the pattern fit, or I could increase 6 stitches. The socks are nicely snug, and there is a wavy pattern, so I elected to increase 6 stitches. I started across the back again, doing a set-up round of increases. I must have been concentrating really hard. Really, really hard.

I concentrated soooooo hard on the stitches that, on the second sock, I picked up the wrong needles and started knitting and ended up with this sort of magic loop going on from the fronts of both socks to the back of the left-hand sock, and with the back of the sock on the right hanging by itself on its own needle. I stared at the needles in disbelief. Oh @#$%.

That took me awhile to untangle considering that I’d also managed to wrap the yarn several times around the needles between the socks. But I eventually made it around a whole repeat just as it was time to head off for lunch with M and then Saturday knitting at Tangle.

There’s this other thing about increasing and decreasing and working on pairs of circular needles: If the increases and decreases aren’t paired on each needle, the needle with more decreases will have fewer and fewer stitches each round, and the needles with more increases will have more and more stitches, and eventually the whole thing will end up rather unbalanced and hard to knit unless one either continuously moves stitches from one needle to the other, or at least moves enough stitches so that the whole thing becomes balanced. I stared at my needles in disbelief. Oh @#$%.

I don’t know if my fellow knitsters knew why I was cursing under my breath or not. Perhaps they decided that it was better not to ask. I finally did manage to get a balanced number of stitches on both needles so that I can now happily knit around and around and around and all is right with the world.

But I didn’t have much more time to knit this weekend because I did something even more fun than trying to fix my bollixed-up attempt at a nice feather-and-fan variation for my socks.

I did taxes.

~Kristie — sent you some info via email. Feel free to get any colorway. Chance are good the lovely ladies at Blue Moon made more than one skein of Covelite, so mine will not be one-of-a-kind. 😉

Sigrid — welcome to the rank of Yarn Collectors!

No, those two things in the subject have nothing to do with one another really. It’s an accident of proximity.

After spending the entire week in the knitting black hole where hours of knitting produce… nothing… the Rooster Feather socks are up to the gussets. At last. They might still be in the black hole, except I decided rather nonchalantly that I would check my row gauge. Yes, gentle reader, when knitting socks there is a difference between 12 rows/inch (assumed gauge) and 11 rows/inch (actual gauge).

By a stroke of good fortune, the knitting gods smiled on me and I checked gauge just when I got to the place that it mattered. What are the odds that will ever happen again?

What can I say except do as I say and not as I do!

Here we see the Rooster Feather socks being used as a neck warmer by my blackboard chicken. She seems a little surprised, don’t you think? The color pooling is still playing happily with the condensed feather and fan pattern. It was a good choice for these socks.

I wish I didn’t need to take flash pictures, but it’s so dark at my house in the winter. At this time of year, the sun makes it over the mountain for only a brief time before setting. Although we’ve been having temperatures in the 40’s during the day, there is still ice in the gutter in front of my house. It’s cold in the shade, and there just isn’t enough sun to warm things up all the way. The good news is that no more water is being added into the mess so whatever leak there was up the street must have been fixed. The ice is slowly evaporating. If we could get above-freezing temperatures at night, I think the ice would finally melt.

Yes, that is the Periodic Table Of The Fruit And Nuts hanging behind the chicken.

When not using the blackboard chicken to leave a message for #1 Son, I used to write Welcome! on the chicken’s side. A nice little greeting for visitors, you know. My message would be crossed out and added to by #1 Son and his teenage cronies. For a long time it said pay homage to my chicken gringo. I never exactly understood that, but I’m willing to go with the flow. We live on the nutty side of the above mentioned periodic table.

Some people have had trouble commenting. 😥 Last night I fired my old spam-blocker and hired a new one as I think that was contributing to the issues. Please leave a comment to help me do a shake-down test. Thanks!

My nearest and dearest would probably universally agree that I am easily distracted by bright shiny objects. (Don’t look over at the list of UFOs! That’s not really there. It’s a figment of your imagination.)

But take a look at this bag! I got to see this very bag up close and personal last night, and it is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. See those bright, shiny disks on the front? Those are pennies, gentle reader. It’s like your favorite pair of penny loafers, only much, much better. And the construction is so cool! The ends fold in all by themselves at just the right angle. And the handle is wrapped with leather!

This beauty is the brain child of Portland’s own Marta McCall. I know you’ve seen her designs in places like Interweave Knits. Now Marta’s patterns are available directly via her own company: TinkkniT.com

Marta’s patterns come complete with sourcing information for the materials used, so you, yourself, gentle reader, can exactly duplicate this marvelous bag or any of her other great designs. How cool is that? I hate it when I find a pattern I love only to read that the yarn was hand-spun by 100-year-old artisans high in the Andes who used only alpaca wool gathered from where it had caught on twigs during the spring molt and then twisted using a secret process handed down from master to apprentice since the time of the Incas and the yarn is then washed in herbs grown only above 10,000 ft and the designer made a special trip by llama to purchase the yarn and that no more is available because, don’t you know, it takes 100 years to gather enough wool. Yeah. What do you substitute for that?

None of that with Marta’s patterns. If you want to substitute, of course you can. But if not, Marta makes sure that the material will be available through the source before including it in the pattern and releasing it into the wild. Thank you Marta!

Everyone… go over to TinkkniT.com and check out the very, very cool products. I’m really taken by the Cheery O’s Pillow… and the Felted Purls… and the Shibori Scarf… and the Urban Wrapper…

Must… be… strong…

Thank you to those of you who comments to let me know that I’m not the only one having… shall we say challenges… with the Jaywalker pattern. It’s always good to know I’m not alone.

#1 Son is in Baltimore today, I think. I have three sets of conflicting tour dates for the Northeast. He’s been pretty good about calling me every couple of days. He hasn’t quite got the time-zone thing down yet, and called early yesterday to let me know:

• The weird noise the van was making went away when the part in question broke. The mechanic said they didn’t really need it anyway.
• Yes, the van was leaking gas, but they wrapped the hose with duct tape so it only leaked a little, the van didn’t blow up and the hose has been fixed now.
• He met a girl in Austin, he’s been talking to her every day, and she might come to Portland to visit.

That conversation woke me up, all right! The last time I visited my colorist, she said I’m almost completely gray now. 🙄 Keep beaming those good-weather thoughts towards the Northeast.

Yesterday dawned clear and warm – just demanding that the day be spent outdoors. How many more days like this will we get?

And, conveniently, yesterday was the second day of the Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival in Canby.

What great timing, eh? So I had a wonderful fiberish day, starting with a whole barn full of fiber-on-the-hoof. And now my city-girl roots will show. (I had horses when I was a kid, but I do not pretend to know anything at all about other kinds of farm animals. I went to the country to ride my horse – she lived in a farmer’s field – and then I went back to the city. OK… the town.)

This happy goat owner was kind enough to let me pet her friend – who apparently really likes both people and cookies. I fantasized about taking this boy home to serve as a bed-warmer on those cold winter nights. Can you imagine running your toes through that lovely cashmere all night? The owner helpfully suggested that the horns would also keep the blankets from weighing down my feet. I doubt that the resident kitties would appreciate a new bed-buddy, though. Alas my fantasy had to be abandoned.

And then there were these lovelies. Look at all that beautiful angora! Doesn’t it make you want to grab your needles and start knitting?

OK… I know there’s a bit of prep work that needs to be done before this fiber is ready for the needles. And since I’m not a spinner I rely on others to do that prep for me. But I am aware of all of the work that goes into it.

Later in the day, as I sat knitting socks and listening to music, one of my fellow fair-goers stopped to chat and ask about my sock techniques. She is a spinner, and has been spinning fingering-weight yarn lately. She hasn’t knit socks for years, but wants to try again. She was interested in my two-socks-on-two-needles knitting. I taught her the Magic Cast-On and asked her about spinning. Oh, she said, If you think you can spend money now…

We both laughed, but she’s right in that I probably don’t really need another money-sucking fun hobby.

And lest you think, gentle reader, that I’m fixated on goats, here are some lovely Jacob sheep. Who wouldn’t fall in love with their spotty beauty and those amazing horns?

It was dark in the barn, and my pictures of the alpaca, the other wonderful kinds of sheep (there was merino, just walking around!), and the bunnies weren’t very successful.

I can report that no living creature so resembles a tribble as an angora rabbit does. With some of them it was hard to tell which end was which! Both ends, though, are covered with amazingly soft fur. They would make good feet warmers, too.

I do think there were fewer animals and more vendors than last year. I hope that’s not a trend, as I really like the animals. Actually, it would be great to have a ton of animals and a ton of vendors.

For those who prefer their fiber a little more processed, there were two buildings crammed to the gills with all things fibery, from bags of fleece to roving to silk to yarn.

Want a new spindle? There were several booths with gorgeous spindles. Organic, natural-color cotton? Nostepinne? Books? Cashmere socks? Lace shawls? It was all here.

And yarn… yarn of every fiber that could possibly be spun. Yarn of every weight from the finest cobweb to the heaviest bulky. Yarn for knitting, yarn for weaving, yarn for crewel, yarn for tatting — yarn just for the sake of yarn. What more could a yarn collector ask for?

I knew I was in heaven.

Of course, one of the first booths I came across was Blue Moon.

Did you know that Sock Candy comes in about a gazillion solid colors? That whole rack in the front is all Sock Candy.

Look, under the windows… that’s all Socks That Rock. All of it. In three different weights. In amazing colors that I’ve never seen before and that aren’t available on their web site. (I don’t belong to the sock club, and some of these colors might have been introduced there.)

I’m sorry for the blurry nature of the picture. My hands may have been shaking. Just a little.

Outside there was sunshine, food, spinners, spinners and more fiber.

A whole circle of spinners – both women and men – sat in the shade under the trees doing cool things with their wheels. There were spinners everywhere. See at the table? Someone spinning with a drop-spindle.

Everywhere I looked there were spinners. I kept thinking I’d really like to know how to do that. It looks so cool! Thus my comments about learning to spin to the fair-goer who asked about my socks.

But one hobby is probably enough.

Music at OFFF this year was provided by The Standing Stones from the Bay Area.

They played songs from their CD Give Fleece A Chance, an international collection of songs about sheep, shearing, wool, spinning, weaving, and all other things sheepy. Shearing songs on harp. It was great!

Unfortunately I missed actually getting the CD. I was busy knitting and talking. Several people came over to ask me about my socks. One woman asked if I was knitting two socks at once in order to make sure they striped the same. I looked at the randomly-striping Trekking and thought to myself that if that were the case I wasn’t succeeding very well. Out loud, to the vast amusement of those around, I told the truth: I do it this way because I would never otherwise knit the second sock.

When I finished chatting, I noticed that the music had stopped. I turned around and the band was gone. I looked for a website for them, but can’t find one. If anyone knows where to get this CD, please pass the info along to me. It would be was great music to knit by!

One more picture from the fair. And sorry that this picture turned out so badly. Forgive my horrible photography, please.

On the left… a sheep. On the right… a dog.

Notice that, although they are the same color and have almost the same length of pelt, the dog is about 10 times bigger than the sheep.

That dog is bigger than some of the alpaca I saw in the barn.

That is easily the biggest dog I have ever seen in real life.

It was a very nice, dog. Very mellow. I was tempted to ask the owner if she shears him yearly, but I restrained myself. And, before you ask, the sheep was being led around on a leash and didn’t seem to mind at all. A most satisfying end to a most satisfying afternoon.

On the way home, I took the opportunity to ride the Canby Ferry.

I’m a sucker for ferries.

It’s only a short ride across the Willamette River. But I still think it’s fun. And at $1.25 per one-way ticket, it’s a pretty cheap amusement. I held the camera out the window of my car to take this picture. I was first in line so I’m right at the front of the ferry. See how beautiful it was on the river?

Now… Last year I didn’t buy anything at OFFF. I was so overwhelmed by all of the yarn, that I couldn’t choose showed admirable restraint by coming home empty handed.

This year…

There might have been just a tiny, tiny, wee amount of stash enhancement.

At the bottom on the left are a hank of cobweb-thin angora lace weight and a hank of merino lace weight. There is about 1300 yards of each, so there’s plenty enough for a couple of really nice shawls.

At the bottom on the right is bulky weight organic, naturally colored cotton. The color washed out in the picture. In real life it’s a bulky strand of something between an ecru mixed with celery wrapped by a thin strand of cream. It’s unbelievably soft. I haven’t decided what to do with this yet. I have about 270 yards. Maybe a hat, or a scarf?

All of the rest is sock yarn, and so doesn’t count. It’s for the yarn collection, y’know. And if it seems like there’s a preponderance of Blue Moon yarns represented… yeah… well…