cable crossed incorrectly

Ah… the best laid plans of knitters knitting away over and over again on recalcitrant heels. I would think that those heels were trying to tell me something, except this little issue cropped up only on the third heel iteration — the successful one.

If it ain’t one thing, it’s another.

You can see it. Right there where the blue arrow is. I crossed the middle three stitches over the right-hand three stitches instead of under them. In fact, you can see it in the final picture from my last post — the I have a happy heel and red toes and I’m oh so smart post. It’s right there. I didn’t even notice.

Oops.

Monday at knit night – a knit night that I rarely get to attend but which is always tons of fun – I finished the second heel and turned blithely to the instep and knit across the first sock, turning cables as I went. I reached the second sock. I went to turn the cable.

I am sorry to report that I may have said a few rather unladylike words even though there was a baby present. I’m not sure. I really don’t remember. I only remember sitting there in horror and frustration and saying I will not rip those heels out yet again!

Can’t you just fix it without ripping? Asked Bobbie.

I admitted that I could. But not in Bella Espresso, where the lighting is coffee-house dim. So I went over to Macy’s to look for a new handbag. A little retail therapy, dontcha know. (I didn’t find one. Payback for oaths spoken where wee ears might hear.)

cable tinked back to cross

Once at home, I stationed myself in my brightly-lit kitchen. Now brightly lit, anyway. Gentle reader, have you ever noticed how all of your kitchen lights (assuming you have more than one) burn out at the same time? A couple of weeks ago (three? four?), one of the 7 spotlights in my kitchen burned out. Soon after, another one followed. I started thinking that I really needed to remember to pick up bulbs when next I was at the store. But, somehow although I could remember kitty litter and coffee and bananas, light bulbs totally escaped me at every store visit. Until I got home and turned on the kitchen light and another bulb went pop-sizzle-snap and the kitchen got a little darker. And then I’d think to myself, I really must remember to pick up some bulbs when next I’m at the store. I was down to the bulb over the sink and was cooking mostly by feel when I finally remembered. My kitchen is now a brightly-lit place, but not a place really conducive to taking pictures of shiny knit objects. But I don’t think I did too badly.

At any rate, while waiting for dinner to cook, I stationed myself in the kitchen – now the most brightly lit room in chez PI – and began surgery on the mis-crossed cable.

The first step is to carefully tink just the three mis-crossed stitches back a few rows to the row where the cable was actually crossed. Note that I could have tinked back either the three stitches wrongly crossed over the top, or the three stitches wrongly crossed underneath. I chose to tink on top because those were the first three stitches I came to when working across the instep of this sock.

cable crossed correctly

Once the stitches were tinked back and I was back to where I started, so to speak, I could cross the cable the correct way. All I needed to do was poke the stitches through the little hole that the crossing makes and pick them back up on the back side.

Well, it was a little tricky. Because this is a sock and my gauge is fairly small, I kept the stitches on a spare needle end with the point towards the right. Then I poked the stitches through to the back side, and transfered the stitches to a spare needle end with the point toward the left.

Now I had the cable crossed correctly, and the only thing left to do was to re-knit those stitches up the rows that I had tinked out. The strands of yarn for those rows were just sitting there waiting for me, so it wasn’t too tough to get those stitches reknit. Then I used the tip of my needle to adjust the gauge a little so that everything was nice and even and crossed the right way and the scarring was so minimal that you couldn’t even tell that surgery had been performed.

re-knit and all is well

Ah…. all better. The cable is crossed the right direction and the order of the universe is restored and I can go ahead and start knitting away on the ankles, around and around and around.

I could show you what happens when one picks up the wrong needle end and starts knitting with it. But maybe I’ll leave that story for another day. Because nothing like that would ever happen around here. Nope. 🙄

Thank you to everyone who commented on my last post. You gave me much to think about. Most of you talked about knitting socks. Which is no surprise because we talk about socks a lot here. Like, obsessively. Every year I make a resolution to knit fewer socks and more other objects. You can look at the sidebar to see how well I’ve done this year. Yeah. Not a pretty site.

Are you as likely to frog a sweater or scarf or hat as you are to frog a pair of socks? Or do socks somehow seem different or special?

too long

Once upon a time there was a knitter named Frizzylocks who loved Cat Bordhi’s Cables & Corrugations Socks and wanted to knit them more than anything in the whole, wide world.

Now Frizzylocks was one of those knitters who never follows patterns. She always changed something, or tweaked something else, or just plain threw the pattern away and did her own thing. But because Frizzylocks loved the Cables & Corrugations Socks so much, she really wanted to knit them just exactly the way the pattern said to.

So she started knitting, and she knit and she knit and she knit. She followed all of the directions until she was ready to turn the heel, and then she tried the socks on. And, although the gusset seemed a bit wide at the top, for the most part they fit pretty well and the length was great. Smiling happily, she began knitting again, following the heel instructions.

What Frizzylocks hadn’t realized when she tired the socks on was that the heel portion of the pattern would add an entire stitch-pattern repeat, making the socks longer, and the set-up for the sock would add quite a few more increases and make the heel even wider.

When the heel was finished, Frizzylocks tried the sock on again. It was too long. It was way, way too long. And the heel was way wide because Frizzylocks has skinny heels. And Frizzylocks was no longer smiling.

too short

So that’s enough third person fairytale. Because this, unfortunately is most decidedly not a fairytale of any kind. The sock was way too long. The heel was way too wide. There was just no getting around it. You can see it in the first picture up there. It was huge.

The width through the foot was OK, though. And that was certainly nice. You will recall that when I first knit the toes I did not trust the pattern and added extra increases and the toes ended up way, way too wide. I think these socks hate me. And really, I like them a lot and I am trying not to take it personally!

So, anyway, I frogged the heel.

I frogged the heel at knit night at Tangle, and there were gasps all around as I took them off the needles. But it doesn’t fit, I explained. Alice tried the glass slipper red sock on. It fit her. Alice offered to take them off my hands (or feet, as the case may be) once completed. I politely declined. Alice started knitting on a gorgeous basketweave sweater that’s been a UFO for a couple of years now because she’s not feeling the love. I suggested that sweater might be swapped for socks. Alice politely declined.

So I frogged the heel and ripped back two pattern repeats — the one created during the heel set-up, and one extra for good measure. My plan was to knit my standard heel, which is narrower. I really like Cat’s heel – I think it’s lovely and brililant – but it doesn’t fit well on my skinny heels. 😥 So I felt forced – forced, I say – to deviate from the pattern. (I think Cat would understand.)

There’s something about the phrase for good measure that does not bode well when my pursuits are concerned. You will, perhaps, remember the never-ending moebius? The one that 11 knitters fit into? Yeah. I cast on just a few extra stitches for good measure.

You can see from the second picture above that the heel is not too wide. But the sock is also now too short. Way too short. I should have only ripped out one pattern repeat, not two. < sigh >

just right

Third times a charm, gentle reader.

I knit one more pattern repeat. Then I stopped and worked my standard heel. It’s not exactly like Cat’s heel, but it’s visually similar. Actually, the flap is pretty much the same, but the turn is different.

And, as you can see from the third picture, this one is just right! The heel fits, it’s the right length. And Frizzylocks is very happy.

Now to do the same thing on the other sock, and I will be back in business heading up the legs. I may need a few extra stitches on the ankles once I get the cable going up the back. But I’m not worried about that at all since I know from experience that increases are really easy to hide in the purls along the edges of cables.

I almost titled this post Why I Don’t Follow Patterns, but then I went into my little fairytale instead.

But that did send me off on a little navel-gazing tangent — Why don’t I follow patterns? Is it just that I’m a rebel? Or is it fit? Or process? Or maybe all of these? Probably the last. But following the Cables & Corrugations pattern has been difficult, even though I fully intended to follow it. I just keep wanting to stray, and the heels gave me the perfect excuse.

What about you, gentle reader? Do you follow patterns? Why or why not?

Are you more enamored of the process of knitting itself, or is it the finished objects that you create that keep you coming back for more?

Would you prefer to knit objects similar to those you have knit before, or would you rather knit something completely different?

When things go wrong — patterns have errors, the swatch lied, you loath the way the yarn is knitting up, the thing looks sucky on you — what is your reaction? Are you angry at the time lost or the pattern author? Are you discouraged or invigorated? Do you want to fix it at any cost and make it work, or bury it 20 feet deep and never see it again?

As I said, I seem to be in a period of thoughtful introspection, so I would love to hear what you think. There are no right answers or wrong answers – and there are probably different answers for every knitter. If you don’t want to answer in comments, email me at Judy at persistentillusion dot com. I really would like to hear from you…

In the Magic Cast-On article, I mentioned that it could be used to start small circles, like top-down hats and bottom-up bags and such. But I never really explained how one would do that. A few people have asked, so here’s a little tutorial. You can click on the pictures to see a larger version.

In this picture, I’ve used the Magic Cast-On to place 5 stitches on a pair of DPN. As usual, the tail is over my index finger and the working yarn is over my thumb.

The first stitch cast on is on the right on needle A. Because I’ve cast on an odd number of stitches (5), the last stitch is the one on the left on needle A.

In this picture, I’ve rotated the needles. I’m going to knit the stitches from needle B using needle C.

Note that I’m holding both the tail and the working yarn together. I’m going to knit all 5 stitches using the double strand.

Now I have knit 5 stitches, and I have 10 yarn loops around the needle — one loop of tail and one of working yarn through each of the original 5 stitches.

On the next round, I’m going to knit each individual loop. By knitting each pair of loops individually instead of together as one stitch, I will double the number of stitches I have on the needles from 5 to 10, without doing any M1 increases.

And here is the result of the last step. I now have 10 stitches on the needles.

I’ve added another DPN because that makes it easier to knit around the circle.

Here is the circle after several rounds. After the second round, I used regular M1 increases to increase from 10 stitches to 17 and added in a fourth DPN.

There’s nothing significant about the number 17, I just wasn’t really good about increasing at a regular interval for this demo. You, of course, gentle reader, will do better.

But note that I have a neat, closed circle. There’s no hole in the middle. And I didn’t have to mess around with tightening anything up or trying to close the middle.

Using the tail held with the working yarn to double your stitches is optional. But sometimes that first increase round can be intresting. This can make it a little easier.

The double-yarn increase method works great as long as the last stitch you cast on is on needle A. If you need an even number of stitches to start your circle, simply start the Magic Cast-On around needle B instead of the more-usual start around needle A. By starting around needle B and casting on an even number of stitches, you will end up with the last stitch cast on around needle A, just where it needs to be.

And there you have it! This works well for hats, round bags, pinwheel blankets and star toes on socks. I used this method to start the Spanish Lavender Basket Wave socks with 6 stitches.

The method can be used with DPNs, as I’ve shown it, or double-circs or magic loop. I demoed with DPNs only because it’s easier to keep them stable when having only two hands to juggling lighting, props and camera.

Have fun!

© 2007 Judy A Becker.

In the Magic Cast-On article, I mentioned that it could be used to start small circles, like top-down hats and bottom-up bags and such. But I never really explained how one would do that. A few people have asked, so here’s a little tutorial. You can click on the pictures to see a larger version.

In this picture, I’ve used the Magic Cast-On to place 5 stitches on a pair of DPN. As usual, the tail is over my index finger and the working yarn is over my thumb.

The first stitch cast on is on the right on needle A. Because I’ve cast on an odd number of stitches (5), the last stitch is the one on the left on needle A.

In this picture, I’ve rotated the needles. I’m going to knit the stitches from needle B using needle C.

Note that I’m holding both the tail and the working yarn together. I’m going to knit all 5 stitches using the double strand.

Now I have knit 5 stitches, and I have 10 yarn loops around the needle — one loop of tail and one of working yarn through each of the original 5 stitches.

On the next round, I’m going to knit each individual loop. By knitting each pair of loops individually instead of together as one stitch, I will double the number of stitches I have on the needles from 5 to 10, without doing any M1 increases.

And here is the result of the last step. I now have 10 stitches on the needles.

I’ve added another DPN because that makes it easier to knit around the circle.

Here is the circle after several rounds. After the second round, I used regular M1 increases to increase from 10 stitches to 17 and added in a fourth DPN.

There’s nothing significant about the number 17, I just wasn’t really good for this demo about increasing at a regular interval. You, of course, gentle reader, will do better.

But note that I have a neat, closed circle. There’s no hole in the middle. And I didn’t have to mess around with tightening anything up or trying to close the middle.

Using the tail held with the working yarn to double your stitches is optional. But sometimes that first increase round can be intresting. This can make it a little easier.

The double-yarn increase method works great as long as the last stitch you cast on is on needle A. If you need an even number of stitches to start your circle, simply start the Magic Cast-On around needle B instead of the more-usual start around needle A. By starting around needle B and casting on an even number of stitches, you will end up with the last stitch cast on around needle A, just where it needs to be.

And there you have it! This works well for hats, round bags, pinwheel blankets and star toes on socks. I used this method to start the Spanish Lavender Basket Wave socks with 6 stitches.

The method can be used with DPNs, as I’ve shown it, or double-circs or magic loop. I demoed with DPNs only because it’s easier to keep them stable when having only two hands to juggling lighting, props and camera.

Have fun!

letter and ladybug markers

Well, it turns out there’s no need to wait for the official markers to use with Cat Bordhi’s new book. (Of course, if you want to wait you can.)

Look at these lovely little markers! They are brought to you by J L Yarnworks’ Etsy shop. Cat’s patterns require the letters A through F. This stitch marker set comes with A through H. I really like the “knit to A then do blah then knit to B and do yadda” directions in Cat’s book, and I see using the same sort of marker philosophy (if you will) for other projects like lace. A couple of extra letters could come in handy. J L Yarnworks’ Etsy shop mentions that the entire alphabet is available. Cool! Maybe next secret pal whatever I’ll spell my pal’s name in stitch markers as a little extra goody. 😉

There are a bunch of different beads available, so no matter what your preference I bet you could get a set that’s your favorite colors. My markers are black and a really pretty silver-blue. These are nicely made markers with no rough edges or pokey bits to snag the finest yarn. And at a very reasonable price! Love ’em, love ’em, love ’em.

socks with markers

Love the little ladybugs, too. OK. Who doesn’t love a lady bug? Sometimes my larger projects need a little bling, too. I’m using one of the ladybug markers on a top secret project (shhhh… ), and every time that little lady bug comes around, I just have to smile at it looking up at me with its beady little eyes. I fancy it’s saying, OK. But I’d really rather prefer eating aphids in the garden.

When you were a child and a ladybug landed on you, did you used to say the little rhyme Ladybug, Ladybug, fly away home. Your house is on fire, your children will burn. When I was little, my mother taught that to me and to this day I still faithfully recite it to the ladybugs in the garden. But it is rather morbid, isn’t it? A rather strange sentiment.

But I digress.

I would love to show you how fun the little ladybug looks flying around my needle, but it’s a secret project. So, it’s… secret. All will be revealed in time.

By the way, there are other really cute little beads where these came from: penguins and fish. You must go look at the little penguins! You will die from the cuteness.

My socks feel so nicely balanced, now that I have the right stitch markers on both socks. Ahhhhh….

sock progress

This is the instep side. I have one more pattern repeat to go, and then I turn the heels. These socks are almost knitting themselves. Maybe it’s because the pattern repeat is only 6 rounds, or because the cables turn every three rounds, but I always feel like I’m making progress. And before you know it, I’m almost done with this section. Except they’re on hold right now. Because I have to work on the secret project.

No, I can’t tell you what it is. It’s secret. (shhhhhhh…)

On another topic, you parents out there with newly-adult-ish teenagers… How are you coping? This was the conversation I had with my son on Tuesday:

#1 Son: Hi, Mom. Just wanted to let you know I’m on my way to California.

Mom (attempting to shift mental gears quickly): You are? Why? Don’t you have to go to work?

#1 Son: I don’t have any hours scheduled until Saturday. A friend has a family member who is very sick. She needed someone to go with her and there isn’t anybody else that’s available. We’re taking her car. I’ll be back Saturday morning.

Mom: Where are you going? Bay area?

#1 Son: San Luis Obispo. But we’ll probably spend tonight in the Bay Area then drive the rest of the way tomorrow. Her car is a little car with standard transmission. Driving a stick is really fun.

Mom: I love you. Please drive carefully.

Gentle reader, if you are the parent of an almost-adult-ish teenager, how are you coping?

One of the things I do to cope is to concentrate on other things. Like the software under the covers of this blog. I use a lot of plugins to do various cool things like the little gadgets in the sidebars, and the spell checker, and the doohickey that closes commenting on a post after a particular length of time. Sometimes one or the other of the plugins has issues. And sometimes it’s darned hard to figure out which one it is.

Lately, every time I publish a post, the sidebars would only load a little way down the left hand side, and then nothing more would load. The only way I could get the site to load all the way again was to turn off some of the plugins. So, one after another, you may have noticed things disappearing. And coming back. And disappearing again. And going wonky.

Yesterday I finally figured out what it was. It was the little word cloud in the left-hand sidebar. The plugin that builds the cloud takes all of the words from every post I’ve ever written, sorts them out, eliminates words like the, and, but, takes the top words, and makes the little cloud. Well… it turns out that I’ve been kinda wordy. Go figure! The poor thing was just choking on the number of words that my fingers have typed over the years. I’ve taken pity on it, and limited its cloud-making effort to the most recent 500 posts.

Can you believe I’ve written more than 500 posts? Me either.

At any rate, when I hit the Publish button, all should be well. Or, at least that’s the theory. Keep your fingers crossed. Here we go…

[ed.] And everything is OK. Yea! And #1 Son just called to report he is just north of Redding, they will be driving all night, and he’ll be home early in the morning. My request that he be careful and drive safely was met with: Why do you worry? I’ve done this millions of times. To which I can only reply, I worry because I’m your mother. It’s my job.

pontoon toe start

With the Bo Diddley Socks off my needles, it’s time for a new beginning.

Thanks to all of you who asked for the pattern. I’ll see what I can do. Being the wonderfully organized designer that I am, ahem, I have absolutely no notes. I did chart the stitch pattern the way I knit it, so at least I have that. But the rest… I’ll have to reverse-engineer it. So don’t hold your breath, ‘K?

But I digress.

Here you see the very beginnings of a pair of Cable And Corrugations socks — that’s the light colored, cabled socks on the right side of the cover of Cat’s new book. Cat calls this the pontoon toe. It starts with the Magic Cast-On, but then you knit back and forth for a few rows on just one needle, so you end up with a little square. Then you pick up stitches on each side of the square. The increases are worked at the edges of the picked-up stitches, so the original square becomes a band that wraps sideways around the toe, and the picked up stitches fan out to become the top and bottom of the foot. It’s rather cool, and I like it a lot. But… it’s not the easiest toe to work in my preferred mode of two-at-a-time on two circs.

So the picture shows how I’ve used a set of DPNs to pick up the stitches along the sides of the little square. Since the toes end up sort of sideways on the needles, I also used the DPNs to help me shift the toes so that all of the instep stitches were on one needle and all of the sole stitches were on the other needles. I really like the way this toe works, but it’s definitely not one to work away from home when I just want to cast on and go, go, go.

Cables And Corrugations instep

But it does make a pretty, pretty toe! And here is the results.

These socks are really a fast knit. They would have been even faster if I’d actually trusted the pattern and knit it as it was written. But nooooooo. I knew better. I was sure that the socks would not be wide enough, even though my feet are skinny and the measurements looked right. Because I was sure that the cables would pull the fabric in too tightly to fit. If I’d bothered to actually read the pattern, I would have seen that Cat thought of that, because Cat thinks of everything. So, after knitting 4″ of toe, I ripped back to the correct place in the toe increases so I had the actual designed number of stitches, and reknit the toe.

Yes, gentle reader, I’m a slow learner. But I can be taught.

I’ve knit up through the first repeat of the cable pattern. I’m really liking these! And… yeah… they fit. 🙄

The yarn is from Pagewood Farm, a small wholesale dyer and spinner. The yarn is a yummy mix of wool, bamboo and nylon, and the colorway is called Really Red. It’s a nice, smooshy yarn to knit with, and the bamboo gives it a pretty sheen. As soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to knit it into this pattern.

Cables And Corrugations sole

And this is the sole side. The gusset (if you want to call it that) is increased between the markers. I got the cute little lettered markers at Cat’s Magical Moebius Festival in Newport last spring. I believe that a major fiber arts company will be offering some really cool ones for sale soon. I hope. Because I’d really like to get another set. You can see that the first sock increases are between A and B, as instructed by the pattern. But the second sock increases are between… cute-little-sock-marker-with-heart and E. Yeah. It will be nice to have two sets.

Tomorrow a group of local and not-so-local knitters are meeting for a Sock Yarn Crawl — sort of like a pub crawl, except with yarn. The crawl starts at Abundant Yarn And Dyeworks, and Rodger has the itinerary listed on his blog. If you are going to be anywhere in the area. Come and join us! Saturday is also my birthday, and there might be some pastry, or even adult beverages (I hope) involved. But not too much of the last, because driving will also be involved.

Today I got a nice surprise in my mailbox. Or, actually, two surprises. But one I’m holding out on. You will see it later.

The other you might not want to look at, unless you want a spoiler. It’s the Rockin Sock Club August offering, down there below the little clicky link. Me likey!