Lest you think, gentle reader, that I have totally deserted the blogosphere, I offer a little proof that I have at least been knitting.

These are the socks that I’m knitting along with my current class. (They aren’t doing the ribbing, though.) This is Socks That Rock in a colorway called Downpour that I picked up at the Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival. The colors are pooling in a spiral stripy sort of way, but I do like it. I reminds me of rain streaking down the windows and blurring the outside gray/brown view. Just like what I’m looking at through my windows every day now.

At least the power has been on, and fairly stable. There are no high-wind storms predicted for at least a few days, so I will keep my fingers crossed. You’d think in a city the size of the Portland metro area that the power lines would all be buried. You’d think, eh?

I need to be ready to turn the heel on the class socks by Tuesday night. I only have about 12 rounds left to do on the gussets, so I should be able to make it with no problem. (Then I can start the sweater.) Then after Tuesday it’s just up the leg to the top. The leg never seems to take very long to knit. It’s the instep that is just interminable on every pair of socks. I swear I can knit instep rounds for hours and hours and when I measure I’ve gained maybe 1/2 inch. Where does all that yarn go? My theory is that it goes into a yarn-sucking, sock-instep-stealing black hole that requires extra knitting energy in order to break free of. The gravity thing, ya know?

When I hit the gussets, I know I’m out of the black hole and home free.

These socks are being knit for a man. They are the replacement to the ill-fated Socktober Socks #1 that swam into the frog pond never to be seen again. I love to knit socks for gifts. But men have such big feet…

Speaking of men… #1 Son (I know I think of him as a boy, but really he’s a man now) called yesterday from North Dakota. Today they will be in South Dakota. The show in Missoula fell through, thank goodness unfortunately, so they will have two days to drive to Spokane. That’s a long, long drive from Rapid City to Spokane. I don’t think they realize how long it will be in the winter. The tour is going well, but he admitted that he is ready to be home. Thursday morning is the expected Portland arrival time, so I will have many things to be thankful for.

Now… back to the socks!

Autumn, my favorite season, has quickly turned into winter, my least favorite. And winter has brought the first cold of the season. I feel blech. I ignored the coming cold on Monday and Tuesday, putting the aches and restless nights down to… some other cause but definitely not a cold. Yesterday I could no longer ignore it and by 7:30 I knew that this little daily ritual called going to work wasn’t happenin’.

We had another terrific windstorm yesterday — one of those storms that makes me glad there are no big trees around my house. It wasn’t as wet as the last storm, but definitely as loud and rambunctious. I settled into my favorite chair with my favorite blanky, some chicken broth, tea, a good book and the cats, and watched a couple of old reruns on TV. I had just finished my tea-and-soup when the lights flickered. That sucks I thought to myself. The lights flickered again and then went off. I unraveled myself from my chair and went to turn off my computer. The lights came back on. I turned off the computer anyway and located a flashlight. The lights went back off and stayed off.

The veteran of numerous flaky-power-supply winters, I have the number of the power company close at hand. I called their automated power failure reporting line. This was the message:

There is a power failure in your area. 1525 homes are affected. We have received 123 calls. We do not know the cause. We expect to have power restored at approximately 5:30 pm.

OK. I can live with that. I dug out my hand-crank radio (my one purchase as a concession to the year-2000 madness) and tuned to a local station. Power outages were reported all over the city from downed trees, etc. It sounded like a mess outside. I started a fire in the fireplace (gas), lit a couple of candles, settled back in my chair and played a mindless game on my Palm. The battery ran out. I’d better go put it in the charger I thought… and then remember that would be a futile gesture. I started knitting on the class socks.

At 6:00 pm, I still had no power.

There is a power failure in your area. 4520 homes are affected. We have received 752 calls. The failure was caused by high winds. We expect to have power restored at approximately 7:00 pm.

By this time I was knitting with the flashlight balanced on my shoulder so I could see, because at 6:00 pm it’s dark. And when there’s no light anywhere in the neighborhood, it’s really dark. I was also feeling a bit hungry, having had nothing since the broth in the morning.

At 7:30 pm, there was no power.

There is a power failure in your area. 4520 homes are affected. We have received 1325 calls. The failure was caused by high winds. We expect to have power restored at approximately 9:00 pm.

Sigh I rummaged around the garage and found a second flashlight, just in case. I really wanted to go back to bed, but I’m chicken to leave a fire going if I’m not watching it and I wanted the heat from the fire. By this time it was pretty chilly back in the bedroom. I wrapped myself in my blanket in my favorite chair, ate a few crackers, resolved to buy more food that I could eat without cooking, and napped a bit.

Have you ever noticed how many thing you want to do require electricity?

I couldn’t cook anything. No microwave. No oven. No stove. I didn’t want to open the refrigerator because I wanted the food to stay as cold as possible, so no milk for cold cereal. No ice maker. No computer. No TV. No heat. No light. I’m not a back-to-the-land sort. I like my little luxuries. I did have the radio. But I had to crank it back up every 20 minutes or so.

The power company is just darned lucky that Lost is on hiatus, or I might have come gunning for them.

The radio, when I cranked it, reported that there was a new problem causing an outage in my area. At 9:30:

There is a power failure in your area. 4632 homes are affected. We have received 2532 calls. The failure was caused by high winds. We expect to have power restored at approximately 11:30 pm.

11:30? But I’m hungry, and I just felt too lousy to go out in the storm and find sustenance. I called the power company again and waited to speak to a live person, who assured me that they were doing everything that they could to restore my power but there were trees down everywhere and they really didn’t know how long it was going to take. 11:30 was just a vague estimate that would probably move to 1:00 am or so if they didn’t make it.

Great.

I took my flashlight and went back to my bedroom for a box of Kleenex. While there, I heard the furnace kick on. I looked out in the hall. Light. There was light! Light and heat and the TV and the microwave and the fridge and the stove and the computer. Oh frabjous day!

I’ve missed you I said to my power supply.

Now if I can just kick this darn cold!

The McMenamin brothers are famous for taking run-down but historic properties and turning them into some of the funkiest, funnest pubs and B&B’s in Oregon, serving as showcases for their microbrews, wine, spirits and very cool art by local artists. Nearly everything is decorated that can be — even the exposed overhead pipes have little faces painted at the elbows.

One of my favorite McMenamin properties is Edgefield. Built in 1911, Edgefield originally served as the Multnomah County Poor Farm. It was a self-sufficient environment, where the residents tended pigs and chickens, grew fruit and vegetables, operated a dairy, meat packing plant and cannery, and worked in the laundry, kitchen and hospital. The poor farm aspect was phased out in the late 1950’s. In 1962, it was renamed Edgefield Manor and turned into a nursing home. It closed in 1982 and most of the buildings were condemned.

The McMenamins purchased the property from Multnomah County in 1990 and spent four years restoring and remodeling and decorating and transforming. The main building now houses a 100-room B&B, the main restaurant and the winery. Out building house numerous small bars and pubs, a theater, a glass blower, the brewery and the distillery. Around the buildings are lovely gardens, the vineyard, and a 17-hole, par 3 pitch & putt.

My favorite thing, though, is the art. As in all McMenamin properties, the art can be surreal, strange, funky, beautiful – often in the same painting. The doors are painted, the walls have murals, paintings are hanging on the walls. It’s a magical place.

Click on the picture to see a bigger version. This painting is one of my favorites. It hangs in the waiting-room area just outside the Black Rabbit restaurant. As much of the art here does, it celebrates the history of Edgefield’s. I love the woman knitting the chessboard. If you click on the link for Edgefield’s artwork and scroll through the pictures, you will see another painting that features knitting.

Finally! I’m free! I’m free!

Or at least that’s what it feels like.

Half way into November, the Socktober socks from hell are finally finished.

OK… I’ll admit it. I actually like them. Now washed and ready to go to their intended recipient at Christmas, they are incredibly soft and luxurious. I love the colors and how the zig zag in the Jaywalker pattern fits in with the African theme of the yarn color. This was a very happy marriage of yarn and pattern, and I am glad I listened to the yarn when it whispered knit me into Jaywalkers.

I will definitely knit with this yarn again.

I will probably not knit Jaywalkers again. I like the finished results, but I didn’t have a great time in the heat of battle. It just seemed like a fight all the way to the finish. I am sure that was an issue with the knitter, and not the pattern.

Please pardon the on-my-chair picture. The best only light in the house in the winter is through my dining room window, and the handiest flat surface is a chair. The colors are pretty true, at least on my monitor.

The Particulars:

• Yarn: Regia Silk Color (55% wool, 25% nylon, 20% silk / 50gr 200yds per ball) in colorway 189, Nairobi — most of two balls.
• Needles: Knitpicks Classic circulars, US#1 (2.5mm).
• Pattern: Toe-up Jaywalkers.
• Where I deviated from the pattern:
  • I used the Magic Cast On.
  • I knit my standard heel rather than the heel in the pattern.
  • I used Eye Of Partridge stitch on the heel flap.
• Other techniques: I used the free end of the yarn to knit the heel so as not to disturb the color pattern on the rest of the sock.

Next up: The class socks. I have about 1″ of the toe done. Guess what I’m doing the rest of this rainy November day? 😀

When I arrived at the regular Thursday Tangle knitting night, the first thing my fellow knitsters asked me was are they done yet?

No, gentle reader, they are not done. Yet. I have about 10 more rounds of pattern and then an inch of ribbing, and then they’ll be done. Pics tomorrow, I hope. Because I still need to knit at least 4 inches (preferably 6-1/2″) on the class socks by next Tuesday, and I have all of about, oh… two rounds knit. Yeah.

Deadlines + Judy = not a happy combination.

In the rest of my life I can meet deadlines. But knitting? It’s just not happening.

KarenK from OR suggests:

It looks like you’re using two circs – try using one size smaller needle for the heel and sole stitches than for the instep stitches – it makes for a firmer and longer-wearing fabric on the bottom of the foot. There is a slight difference in row gauge but I make a couple of short rows on the sole as it’s worked, and it makes up for that.

Thanks for the suggestion, KarenK. I usually try for a firm fabric all the way around. I’m a fairly tight knitter, so the sizes I mentioned in my last post give me a pretty firm gauge. But I can see that if I needed to use a looser gauge on the instep for some reason, that knitting with a smaller needle on the sole would work well. I’ll definitely store that away in the hint book!

I hope that your part of Oregon isn’t too wet. I see that the next storms in line are coming today and Sunday.

~Kristie asks:

If I want to knit a pair of socks as a gift, & I only know the recipients shoe size, is their a “tried-and-true” pattern that works for all feet?

I don’t know of a “universal” pattern. You can find patterns out on the web that have instructions for multiple sizes. Also on the web, if you google something like shoe sizes in inches you’ll find a chart that tells you how long a shoe size is in inches. An average foot is approximately square – i.e. if the shoe size is 9-1/2″ long, then the person’s foot is probably about 9-1/2″ in circumference. Of course, nobody’s feet are average. But that’s why ribbing was invented. 😆 If I’m knitting for a man, I usually go for a subtle rib, like a K3P1 or something similar. Just enough to give some stretch, but not enough to yell ribbing. If I’m knitting for a woman, I might try for something a little bit fancier, like a traveling rib. But I’d keep to a pattern that had a lot of stretch in it and make sure that I had some negative ease in the width. Hope that helped!

Of course, I’m ignoring my own advice by knitting Jaywalkers – a not-very-stretchy pattern – for someone whose feet I have only a vague idea of sizing for. Yeah. Do as I say, gentle readers, and not as I do. 😉

So I didn’t get the Jaywalkers finished by the time my class started last night. I found an old pair of Addi Turbos I could start my class socks on. I am punishing myself by refusing to take the Jaywalkers off the Knitpicks needles until they are finished. Not that I have anything against Addis. I don’t really prefer them for knitting socks, though, because of the blunt points. And this pair has one needle that’s bent.

I decided to knit a pair of socks along with my class this time. I don’t usually do that, but I’m all for trying new things to find out what works best. In the past I’ve used large needles and bulky yarn to demonstrate because I thought that would be easier for people to see. But it turned out that people had a hard time translating that back to sock-sized needles and yarn. So this time we’re having a little sock class KAL. And I have cast on some really lovely Socks That Rock in a colorway called downpour that I picked up a the Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival. It’s a manly mix of browns and grays that fits right in with the current weather up here in the Pacific Northwest. Lately I’ve considered commuting to work via canoe.

The class socks are meant for the same recipient as the doomed Socktober Socks #1. But, as not to jinx my newly returned sock mojo, I am referring to them only as the “class socks.” I need to be up to the gussets by next Tuesday. And if I want to be doing that on the Knitpicks needles, I gotta be finishin’ those blasted Jaywalkers.

I tell you, gentle reader, these socks are just interminable. I’ve been in the knitting black hole since I cast on the toes. You can see from the picture that I’m getting closer to the end, though. Another couple of inches and I can do the ribbing and be done. They go over my heel with no problem, so I think the fit will be fine. And I do like the yarn and the color, which I would definitely knit again. I don’t think I’ll knit Jaywalkers again, though.

And what, you may ask, happened to my trusty Inox Greys that have knit so many pair of happy socks? Why am I reduced to casting onto a bent Addi? 🙁 Both Knitpicks and Addi US#1 needles are 2.5mm and US#2 are 3mm. My beloved Inox US#2 are 2.75mm and Inox US#1 are 2.25mm. Alas, never the twain shall meet. And with my knitting, at least, that .25mm difference between needles is enough to change my gauge. While I love having so many options, it means I can’t switch with impunity between Knitpicks and Inox. Thus the Addis.

Now… two pairs of socks to get moving… because I really, really, really want to start that sweater!