Category: knitting

I’m sitting here with slightly aching shoulders from a recent swim, but I’m not going to be talking about that as much here. I’m trying to keep from boring the bajesus out of people who are not interested, so I’ve started a swimming blog – Slow as Christmas.

Today we’re talking about knitting. I’ve bought way too much sock yarn and so I am knitting a lot of socks. I prefer hand-knit wool socks. They’re quite warm, very comfy and just plain have a better fit than commercial sock. I have a wide, short foot. Maybe that has something to do with it.

I have been working mostly on shorter knitting projects recently, and socks are closer to the instant gratification category than my usual sweaters. I also made a scarf for a friend for her birthday, but forgot to take a picture. I’d knitted her a scarf back when I was in high school (I had totally forgotten about doing it!) and she mentioned that she was sorry it had had its day. So when I was visiting over Christmas, I told her to pick out some yarn and I’d knit her another one. I will say that I think the more recent one is of a high quality than my clumsy attempts at a garter stitch scarf when I was in my mid-teens.

So, I’m not doing much in the way of longer-term knitting projects. I do have a sweater on the needles for my son, too, but I think that’s probably not going to be done before he’s not much in need of the really warm sweaters. He moved to Virginia, and while they’re having one heck of a winter there, spring is less than a month away for them! His sweater is going to be a simple one – a yellow raglan in stockingette stitch. He seems to like simple designs and plain blocks of flame colors.

The problem is, I really do need to do some knitting for myself. The newest sweater I have was knit three years ago, and while it’s very nice, it’s the only sweater I own that’s really appropriate to wear to work. I live in a cold climate and need sweaters appropriate to the office.

The classic Norwegian sweater-jacket would certainly be perfectly appropriate for office wear. I’ve fooled around long enough, and really do need to break down and learn steeking. The sweater on the right will be very much the type I am going to make, though it will be a bit more figure-hugging, and being me, I will probably add some weird twist on it when I make it. If you think I might be drawing some inspiration from We Call Them Pirates across the band at the upper chest, you’d be very right! I know, I know, I use that pattern a lot in my knitting. What can I say? I love it. Since I work in IT, professional with a soupçon of quirky is okay dress-wise.

Goodness knows I’ve had that sweater in mind for years. I need to knit it.

And after that, I am going to knit myself an Aran. I’ve also been wanting one for years. Not really great office wear, but I don’t care. I’ve got a great pattern dictionary and will be able to knit in the round as a nice raglan. I’m going to have to design that one for myself, though. Since I am deep-bodied, the usual bulky Aran cables would make me look like a sausage. I think most of the body and sleeves will have a lot of texture work, then an intricate cabled panel down the front with cables down the top of the sleeves.

I did something similar in the sweater I made for my father for Christmas last year. He’s got a round, deep body and too much cable work will create an illusion of more depth than would suit that particular body shape. I was even worried that raglan sleeves would be too much in the shoulders, because he is broad-shouldered, but it actually worked nicely. I don’t worry about the raglan for myself. For all that I am a swimmer, I have narrow shoulders. Anything that brings a slight illusion of greater shoulder breadth can only work to my advantage!

As is not unusual in our Northern New England winters, I’ve been knitting a great deal. Being as it’s been a somewhat rougher winter, weather-wise, than usual, I’ve been using more than my usual amount of spare time for knitting.

I’ve got a sock and a sweater on the needles at the moment. Why? Well, socks are a portable project. They’re easy to toss in a purse and perfect to keep one distracted in waiting rooms, on buses and to relax on a lunch break. The sweater I am working on is in the bulky stage. I usually knit in the round, so sweater sleeves might be delightfully portable, but when you attach them to the body, any sweater for an adult becomes really bulky. That’s my writin’ chair project.

I’m taking a break from knitting because my hands hurt. Yes, I know, knitting too much, and I’m not sure typing an article is really the way to relieve the problem, but it’s a different motion, right?

After I finish it, though, I’m going back to review some material in Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Knitter’s Almanac
for my project.

When I picked it up, I really got to thinking. I’m a knitter and a reader, so I do have a pretty good knitting library. Stitch dictionaries, books about techniques, books full of patterns… I enjoy them.

But I keep going back to Mrs. Zimmerman’s books.

Why?

She taught me how to knit. No, I don’t mean basic techniques. My mother, though not into knitting to the insanity I am, did know how and taught me casting on and the garter stitch when I was a little kid. It wasn’t until several decades later that I wanted to make sweaters and stuff. I experimented with several methods before reading Knitting Without Tears. It was like the heavens opening.

Zimmerman was indeed a very clever knitting designer, but she did something I found even better. She taught the underlying concept behind the patterns, why the garment worked up the way it did, and strongly encouraged her readers to become their own designers and not worry too much about what a pattern said. I loved that.

“I knit all year, day in, day out. It is my passion, and I rarely knit the same thing twice in the same way.” Elizabeth Zimmerman, Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Knitter’s Almanac.

I’m similar. I’ve knit the same sweater twice exactly once – Roll Your Own Braided Yoke Sweater. That’s mostly because Mom and I have the same basic shape, so when I liked how it looked on me, I had to make one in a different color for Mom.

But for the most part, I’m always tweaking and changing and I like knitting that way better. The problem is, of course, that I can’t follow a pattern worth a damn.

In a way, I’m a fanfic* knitter. I take things I like from other people’s work and make something new, concentrating on the design elements that make me happy and expanding on them.

By the way, fanfic means “Fan Fiction.” A fan of a series, or television show or whatever will take settings, characters and worldbuilding from an author’s work and expand on it, creating stories of their own. It’s a not too unusual way for people to learn to write stories. Keep that concept in mind. It’ll be important later.

So, I’m working on finishing a sweater I started back last April. It’s a seamless raglan sweater, and the sleeves are done. I cheated and used the process of making the sleeves as a gauge swatch. It worked quite well and I’m pretty comfortable that the body will fit just fine.
The front panel is going to be this lattice diamond pattern framed by a cable called “Riptide Wave” in my favorite stitch dictionary.

I’m slowly making my peace with the idea that I just never going to knit a sweater directly from a pattern. I feel weird about it, as if I don’t truly knit well if I can’t seem to do this. (Yes, I know. I knit just fine.)

It’s not that I never carefully follow a pattern. I’ve knitted a couple of sweaters from The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns (a wonderful gift from a friend when I was whining that I couldn’t find a sloper kind of pattern like you have for sewing), and learned seaming sweaters ain’t my thang. I still use it for gloves, hats and mittens.

Then I read Knitting Without Tears and learned that the design canvas I like best for a sweater is one that is knit in the round. One of these days, I’m going to get the courage to steek a sweater to make a cardigan, honest, but that’s scary.
I’ve knit directly from patterns the We Call Them Pirates hats and gloves. That’s where I learned stranded knitting, and where I started to realize I knit like a lot of people write fanfic. Boy, howdy have I done the knitting fanfic on that design with sweaters and stockings. I’m not even done. I have a cardigan mentally planned out using it that is going to be so awesome I bounce up and down in my chair a little whenever I think about doing it.

After I learned stranded knitting, I started to knit from basic templates and add design challenges for fun and to expand my skills. To be very honest, many of my projects have one tiny little element that’s outside my comfort zone, but are mostly things that I’ve done before and feel comfortable with. To me, it seems like a good way to gain skill without driving oneself crazy. But I’m always reading about some design or technique I like, but I almost never knit the pattern. I take the design element I like and use it.

So, essentially, most of my knitting is one form of fanfic or another.

As you know, Bob, I’m a knitter and my favorite things to knit are socks and sweaters. Mostly because then I wear them.

I’m knitting the first thing I’ve knit in a good eight months. A Life-Eating Project seems to have sucked away my mental energy to the point where it was beginning to worry not only me, but my family. I needed to do something at least moderately creative and soothing that would make me feel good without long-term commitment. That meant knitting and it meant a small project.

So, socks…

I’m knitting some basic toe-up socks out of leftover yarn I have around. I have special sock yarn, but this stuff isn’t it. It’s Wool of the Andes Sport that I have left over from various knitting projects. It’s a bit thick, but I live in Northern New England and it’s cold. Thick wool socks are nice.

I took the risk on this yarn when my LYS owner commented that she doesn’t really bother to buy special sock yarn, but knits them out of leftovers from the truly extraordinary Nordic sweaters she knits. They are thick, but about like hiking socks.

Which, after nearly two hundred words, brings me to the main point of this article.

I ran across a sock-knitting block post by a knitter who cannot bring herself to wear socks often. After cost of the materials (she quoted $20 for a pair of socks) and the time put in, she didn’t want to wear them out.

The comments got to talking about how yeah, you can buy a pair of socks at a department store for five bucks, so hand-knit socks are so expensive.

I don’t knit to save money. It’s a hobby, but a not-too-expensive one for me. I spent less than $100 in yarn last year planning to do a mess of knitting for Christmas presents that never panned out, so I still have a larger stash than is usual for me. The socks I’m knitting now are from leftovers from the two sweaters I did knit and used about two balls of yarn, totaling five bucks to buy.

But if I bought those 100% wool socks, I’m still looking at between $8 and $10 for an inexpensive pair of wool socks. L.L. Bean, my preferred winter gear go-to, charges more.

But after I’ve gone to all that trouble, expensive or not, darn right I am going to wear the socks I made. Will they wear out? You bet. Socks do. It’s the nature of the garment. I’m easy on my socks – wearing slippers in the house rather than just the bare socks, and hand-washing the hand-knit ones. But, I’ve been knitting socks for eight years. Of course I’ve had a pair or two wear out.

I wonder why someone would go to the trouble to make them then not use them. What’s more of a waste, keeping them in the sock drawer, or enjoying them after you make them?

I have been utterly obsessed with knitting knee socks lately. I like to wear skirts, I live where it’s cold, but between long johns and knee socks, I can wear a broomstick skirt and still be plenty warm.

But! I have a problem. Slender, I am not. Shoot. Let’s not put too fine a point on it – I’m plus sized and carry my weight a lot in my legs. Yes, this means that regular knee socks aren’t going to fit my calves all that well.

But! I can knit. Not only can I knit, I am very good at adapting patterns and experimenting. I decided I was going to see what kind of increases worked well to get a sock that fit my calves as well as my itty-bitty feet.

These socks (more properly stockings) were the experiment. I made them from left-over worsted weight yarn I had lying around.

They didn’t stay up. That’s okay. I made sock garters. But even so… I prefer socks that stay up, and maybe aren’t quite as thick.

Deciding I had the general idea down, I used some more expensive fingering weight wool to make the next pair of socks. I like these a lot. They fit great.

They also don’t stay up too well. Again, sock garters. Hey, I did it when I was a Brownie, I can do it now.

For my next attempt, I made some knee socks with sewn-in elastic. These socks aren’t wool, but microfiber.

Sorry. For all that synthetic materials have their place, it isn’t the place for keeping the feet properly and comfortably toasty. Wool is better.

The sewn-in elastic is okay, but not my best preference.

These socks… Now these make me happy on a bunch of different levels.

They stay up, for one thing! I did a serious decrease the top before I started the ribbing, and that worked out really well.

The only thing I don’t like about them is that the heels and the toes are a little loose. They’re knit at a slightly looser gauge than the stranded colorwork pattern. I’ve created a pattern for another pair very similar in design to these using a spider motif (I’m calling them my Anansi Socks. I just need to figure out how to incorporate a web design in the calf increases) and when I do the toes and the heels, I’ll just go down a size on the needles for a tighter toe and heel.

I suppose iterative development has its place even in knitting, huh?

Okay, so I make these knee socks – mostly as an experiment, and to use up some extra yarn I had. I was just being silly and all and figured I’d be wearing them around the house. They’re made of worsted weight yarn, and are a lot thicker than you usually make socks.

So, I needed to go to the fabric store to get some elastic to make some sock garters. I went wearing these under a skirt.

Holy-moley. These suckers are warm! So much so that I’m going to make another pair out of some more leftover yarn I have. They’re awesome. I mean, we’re talking New England winter here, but a skirt was perfectly comfortable outside.

Now, the question is, do I make goofy stripes, or try for a more serious look?

I indulged in a gadget fetish. I probably shouldn’t, but I did.

This is a Knit Kit – a compact device about the size of my hand that I keep in my back pack (which serves as my office, knitting bag and overnight bag) and holds various little items that you might need for a project, but are easy to lose.

This is the front of the kit, where you can see a stitch counter at the top. To the side is a small, swivel-out thread cutter. It cuts yarn pretty well. On the right is a curved crochet hook with a hook at each end, small or larger, depending on what you need.

There is also a very useful retractable tape measure – always needed when working on any sort of garment. It pulls out to an ample 60″ and retracts with ease.

When you flip the kit over the first thing you see is a needle gauge. I love this, as I am always wearing the markings off of any needles I’m using, so having this most useful of knitting accoutrements takes some guesswork out of my projects.

Opening up the back you’ll find a foldable pair of scissors that are billed as being TSA compliant, two tip protectors, a darning needle and several stitch markers. I love this thing. Truly it is the Swiss Army knife of knitting gadgets and has a welcome home in my bag.

Oh, and for all that it’s totally cliché? I like the pink, too.

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No, I wasn’t paid to write this, nor was I given a free one. I just like the gadget.