cwBlog

I had a good night last night. I finished two socks.

What? No, I didn't start them both last night!

One was a sock from Katherine Misegades's sock booklet for [Tongue River Farm] (http://www.icelandicsheep.com) -- beautiful Fair Isle socks. I've written about these socks before. I bought a "sock kit" at Rhinebeck 2006: three 8-ounce (approximately) hanks of Tongue River Farm Icelandic sock weight yarn in three different "colors" -- natural white, natural brown, natural grey -- and the booklet. It wound up being a slight price break on the yarn, which was beautiful and luxurious, and the sock patterns looked interesting.

Well, the first sock pattern was a doozy. Misegades used a heel construction I wasn't familiar with: when you get to the point at which, on a standard top-down heel flap sock, you'd start working the heel flap. Instead, you work a pattern on the instep and heel, and start working a gusset between them. When you get to what would be the end of the heel flap, you short-row across on the heel, working ssk or p2tog at the end of the row to compensate for the gusset increases, and wrapping the following stitch to prevent holes. To add to this, the colorwork doesn't stop at all -- as you're doing all this complicated stuff to structure the heel, you're also doing all this complicated colorwork.

Because I wasn't familiar with the heel construction, and because it was apparent that all this complicated stuff (some of which I didn't understand) was going on at once, I decided to knit the socks at the size they were designed, even though they almost certainly wouldn't fit me. Well, in February I made a mistake on the heel turn on the second sock, and set it aside for a while. Last weekend I decided to fix the heel, and I ripped it back about two dozen rows (they were short rows, so this is not nearly so drastic as it seems), carefully picked up the stitches, and resumed work. Well, when I left for work yesterday morning I had both socks together -- as you may recall from prior posts, I needed to see the mistakes on the first sock so I could duplicate them on the second sock -- and so when I got off the train at my stop for work I had nothing left to do except work the toe.

So I had been meaning to visit one of the local knitting circles -- I've missed the camaraderie since I moved away from my old one. Well, last night I went to the West Branch of the Somerville Public Library, where Ravelry told me that knitters congregate. And I worked the toe there, and finished it. The knitters admired it, and asked who the socks were for -- and that's when I admitted that I had no idea, and they were going to go to the first person they fit. "Like Cinderella!" one of them crowed. Yes, exactly -- although I'm not going to marry the person the socks fit.

And that gave me such a rush that I immediately picked up my Noro socks and knit furiously on them -- I had made it to the ribbing, working toe-up -- until, just before midnight last night, I tried on the sock, decided that 25 rounds was enough ribbing, as it was approaching the bottom of my calf muscle, and I did not want to deal with shaping and ribbing at the same time. So I bound off the last stitch around 12:30, put on the sock, wore it around for a few minutes, and then went to bed.

And boy, after six hours of knitting, did I ever have strange dreams. The Yarn Harlot was in them, filing a restraining order against me. This is what happens when you watch Judge Judy -- my guilty daytime TV pleasure, from my grad school days, now watched a couple shows at a time thanks to the magic of TiVo -- while knitting. Last night's batch was heavy on the restraining orders and relationship stupidity.

And then, when I got in the shower this morning -- and this is almost certainly because the Fair Isle socks used it as a decrease -- my brain informed me that it understood the difference between the sl 1, k2tog, psso decrease and the sl2tog kwise, k1, p2sso decrease. That's something about being a verbal/symbolic and kinesthetic learner -- sometimes the only way to understand things, if they don't make sense to you visually, and you can't analyze them symbolically, is to do them. I understood that about the heel construction on that sock pattern, but I didn't understand it about the decreases.

Dear Yarn Harlot,

I'm sorry I snarled at you yesterday. It was the lace's fault, and I'm sure you understand. You gave every sign of understanding yesterday, but it bothered me, so I figured I'd write this note.

Here's how it all happened.

The weekend started out great. Yesterday morning was the Gore Place Sheepshearing Festival. Gore Place used to be the country home of the Gore family, and dates back to the early 1800s; the house itself is beautiful, and the grounds are still, from what I understand, a working farm, although it's for historical reenactment purposes rather than profit or even subsistence. Every spring, when it's time to shear the sheep, they organize a craft fair and invite yarn vendors. Families come out to see the annoyed sheep and to buy tchotchkes, fairground-style food, and yarn.

My LYS owner had told me that Bartlett Yarns was going to be there, and that sealed the deal for me. Bartlett is a Maine mill that has one of the last working mule spinners in the country. I have only the vaguest idea of what that means, but what I do know is that Bartlett produces beautiful, durable yarns in a wide variety of colors -- and many of the colors are spun so as to be subtly heathered, with rich flecks and undertones. They sell it in three weights -- 2-ply, which is somewhere around worsted weight; 3-ply, which is a heavy worsted weight; and sport, which is (surprise!) a sport weight. I've wanted for some time to get enough of their sport weight for a gansey, and I decided that Saturday was the day.

(Aside: one of the drawbacks with Bartlett Sport is that it is only available in 1-pound cones. One of the advantages is that the 1-pound cone sells for $32, which means that for between 1-1/2 and 3 times the cost of an average hank of sock yarn, you get 4 times as much yarn. Still, I can't help but think that if it were put up in 4-ounce hanks rather than 1-pound cones it would be an easier sell.)

Anyway. I bought five cones of Bartlett sport -- three Oatmeal, for the gansey; one rich red; and one charcoal, with subtle lighter and darker tones in it. They join the three cones of Bartlett I already had -- one dark teal, one forest green, and one cream-colored natural. When I got home I realized that the red I had bought would be perfect for another pair of Red Sox socks, but that was completely unintentional at the time, I swear.

Saturday afternoon was a board game day for the Alpha Delta Phi Society Boston group. It was a lot of fun, and I learned that one of my fraternity brothers had his 15 minutes of fame and won a great deal of money on the TV show Beauty and the Geek. But this is about knitting, not reality television, and so I return to the tale.

Sunday morning I woke up feelng a lot dehydrated. This usually happens to me in spring and fall. So I drank about a liter of water, and felt better. I should have taken that as a Sign, but didn't. Instead I threw four knitting projects (Noro sock, fair isle sock, purple shawl, self-pattering sock), a Webs gift certificate, and a bottle of water into my shoulder bag and set off, my partner driving, for Northampton. Notice the presence of lace and the lack of aspirin or Tylenol or any other painkiller -- that will become important later.

On the road there I chugged along on the Fair Isle sock, and would have finished it, too. Except that I got to a certain point on the foot, and remembered that I had made a mistake n the first sock -- and it was one of those mistakes that could be rationalized as a Design Decision, so I had left it. But I did not remember exactly what I had done, and I did not want the socks to be different, and so I stopped working on the sock. This was annoying.

So my partner dropped me off at the Calvin Theater and said he'd see me at Webs, probably around 4:00. (He had things to take care of in the area.) I sat down, and realized that the Calvin is not conducive to knitting dark lace on dark wood needles. So I pulled out the Noro sock, and worked almost all the way through the lecture, until the Q&A period -- and I realized I had laughed at something and dropped three stitches. And there was not enough light to fix it. Ah, well, only a few minutes -- so I fidgeted through the end of the Q&A session. (An object lesson -- knitting as a substitute for patience.) Oh, and I finished my bottle of water during the lecture.

Then the flock of knitters left the Calvin and walked to Webs. This was a truly amazing sight -- 700+ people all streaming out of the Calvin, a parade of knitters. But it was sunny, and my headache got worse, and I started feeling cranky. This was a sign that I probably should have detoured to CVS and gotten some painkillers. But I didn't - I was being swept along by a stream of knitters, and going to a yarn store, and so I didn't think. Stupid me.

So I got to Webs, and I looked at all the pretty yarns. Kauni, the Opal Rainforest Collection 3, some 70/2 linen that I was considering for the I-must-be-crazy-I-don't-even-have-a-round-table Rose of England tablecloth project. A lot of interesting bamboo and synthetic blends. An explosion of sock yarns since the last time I was in Webs, including Louet Gems Opal. None of it spoke to me, even though I had a healthy budget for the day - since I was planning to be back for the Tent Sale, and I had just bought five pounds of yarn, I decided to only buy yarn that really insisted on going home with me, and nothing (well, with one exception) really did. After a while (getting more headachey and crankier) I got into line to get the new book and get it signed.

The three dropped stitches had been irritating me, so the first thing I did when I got in line was to pull out the sock and fix it. It was easy, with enough light. The next thing I did was stow the sock and pull out the lace. This was my big mistake of the day.

So I started working a row, and realized I had one fewer stitch in the first section than I should have had. I mark the sections with stitch markers -- it's easier to catch mistakes that way, usually. I counted stitches, I picked out about 20 stitches worth of ssks and YOs and k2togs, and counted them again. One @#$%ing stitch short. So I scrutinized the chart and found that the last stitch before the marker was a YO, which I didn't see in my knitting. So I picked up the "dropped" YO and continued. (Experienced lace knitters will have some inkling of what's going on here. It's a testament to my crankiness and mood that I didn't.) So I knit across the second section, and found that I had one stitch too many. (Experienced lace knitters will be nodding here, because they've figured out exactly what the problem was.)

So I picked out the whole first half of the row. Again. I took deep calming, cleansing breaths. I drank the water that the helpful Webs staff people were handing out. I studied the chart. I read my knitting. I counted stitches. I knit across again, figuring it would work out OK this time, because I couldn't see the mistake. And it didn't magically fix itself.

At this point people were watching me nervously as I took my deep cleansing breaths and scowling at my lace. I picked out back to the beginning of the row again, and that's when I saw it. You see, this is one of those lace patterns where all the lace work is done on the right side and the wrong side is just purling back, with 4-6 knit stitches in one of the motifs, just to keep things interesting. On the prior purl row, the stitch marker next to the YO had migrated from one side to the other, and when I purled back across it, I didn't notice.

So then I'm about three people back from the signing table now, and I have finally caught the mistake. So I work back across. sl 1, k3, YO, k2tog, YO, k2tog, YO, (k3 YO)* to 1 before marker (now in the right place!), k1. Except that when I get to the k1, there's an extra stitch there. And it's my turn to have my book signed.

So the estimable Yarn Harlot smiles at me -- she's been signing books and being friendly to strange knitters and lecturing since 10 in the morning, and I know if I were in that situation I would have long since snapped and attacked somebody with a circular needle -- and asks, in her polite Canadian way, "How are you?"

And I brandish my lace, and I scowl, and I say, "I'm going to lie and say, 'Great,' because, to be honest, I CANNOT RELIABLY COUNT TO FOUR!" and shook the lace at her. "I have knit and picked out and re-knit and re-picked-out the same half-row for the past hour!"

To her credit, she understood, and pointed out that that was a very cost-effective use of yarn, knitting it more than once. I'm still sorry I snarled.

And a summary of the rest of the afternoon: I sat in a chair and finally knit the entire row correctly, and the following purl row. I wound up buying only one ball of yarn -- a beautiful discontinued color of Tofutsies, in green and white -- but I got Cat Bordhi's New Pathways for Sock Knitters and Myra Stahman's Stahman's Shawls and Scarves -- the former for its new ideas, and the latter for its well-executed old ideas. (Besides, I rationalized, some of those scarves would look really good in that new Bartlett Sport yarn!) And long circs in 2.75mm and 3.25mm for the gansey knitting, another set of 2.75mm dpns, and another set of 2mm dpns.

It's funny - it was a pretty miserable day physically, since the headache did not go away until I finally got home and took some Aleve. And the lace was the most frustrating part, but when I got home all I wanted to do was knit, and so I swatched for the gansey on my new 3.25mm needles. (They may not work: they produce a very nice St st in that yarn, but when I tried trinity stitch, it was far too open for my taste. Fortunately, I have 2.75mm needles, but by the time I had cast on and worked a dozen rows of St st and a half-dozen rows of trinity stitch, it was past bedtime.) On the T today, on the way to work, the Red Line northbound was delayed (no idea why) but I was happy because I had the first Fair Isle sock to match mistake-for-mistake. And tonight I'm planning to go to a knitting circle I've known about for some time - at the Somerville Public Library near Davis Square - but which I haven't actually gotten to, Mondays being what they are. But I'm not bringing the lace -- it's in time-out.

Recently I was talking online with a friend who insisted that he was only an average knitter, and that got me thinking about what makes someone an average or an expert knitter. It also ties in with some of the annoyance I've been feeling lately towards some of the knitting lists.

This friend -- whom we'll call Mike, because, well, that's his name -- has knit probably a dozen pairs of socks, including a complicated Aran patterned one, and two sweaters. And not just any sweaters, either: one was Alice Starmore's "Irish Moss," and the other was a colorwork sweater he designed himself with the help of Ann Budd's The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns and Ann Feitelson's The Art of Fair Isle Knitting.

I thought of this as I cleaned out an archive of mailing list postings. One of the lists I'm on had an extensive discussion about whether a knitter's first project should be a scarf or a washcloth, or something as terrifyingly challenging as a headband or a hat. And the consensus was that new knitters should stick to garter stitch with no shaping for as long as possible, because otherwise they'll be scared off by all the challenging stuff they might be asked to do. Indeed, some of the posters went so far as to advocate discouraging new knitters from trying socks or sweaters until the new knitters were ready for them.

And there are the regular terrified postings on the Socknitters list as a novice knitter knits her (it's almost always a her) first pair of socks and approaches the heel turn, something her knitting friends have told her is incomprehensibly difficult. And more often than not, the difficulty of the heel turn becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: the knitter is so terrified of the heel that she makes silly mistakes out of pure nervousness.

And then I think about Mike, who managed to knit four pairs of socks without fear because nobody told him how hard the heel turn was supposed to be.

Indeed, in the online chat, I pointed out that he had knit an Alice Starmore sweater pattern from start to finish. Many knitters, when faced with a Starmore pattern, would look at the charts and the terse instructions, and run weeping in the other direction. Nobody told Mike that charts were hard, so he didn't have any problem learning how to knit from them. Nobody told him that knitting patterns were supposed to be wordy and friendly, and so he wasn't bothered by the terseness and lack of handholding in the pattern. Of course when he ran into unfamiliar things, he had to look them up, but he expected that -- he had been knitting for less than a year.

His fourth pair of socks was a test-knit for my Elsinore socks -- cables all over the place, a total of six cable panels around the sock in the size he knit. He wasn't the best test knitter, as he was a bit unclear on the concept -- his entire commentary on the pattern was, in essence, "I like the socks a lot. You made a few mistakes in the pattern but I figured out what you meant and knit the right thing anyway."

So what makes Mike not an "average knitter" in my eyes? For one, his willingness to try new things. I see list email from people who have been knitting for 25 years but who are only just now getting the nerve to try socks. How many dishcloths and garter stitch scarfs can one person knit before trying something new just out of sheer boredom? Empirical evidence suggests that there is no upper bound to that number -- but the master knitters challenge themselves.

For another thing, he's not afraid of knitting. (This may have something to do with his day job as a fireman.) So what if the thing he tries doesn't work? He can always rip it out and reknit it -- and he's likely to learn from the mistake. (And to fix others' mistakes.) He's what Elizabeth Zimmermann called a "thinking knitter."

And, if you look at the population of knitting lists and knitting circles, that makes him decidedly above average.