Belatedly tangled

Seduced by a Mystery (Sock), again

So I was just hypnotized by the November mystery sock, over at Sock Knitters Anonymous. I hungrily knitted each clue as it was posted. I read the threads where people carped at the designer, amazed at what can be misunderstood in directions.

And the resulting socks really turned out lovely. It's a graceful design, and the elements work well together. I especially liked the alternative heel stitch.

January's, it seemed clear that I should skip. I'm just not into intarsia or figurative patterns.

But March? There's one clue up, and it's a doozy. A provisional cast-on, two vague inches of stockinette, and then some entrelac. The designer's replies to questions have suggested that the entrelac will pretty much stop here. The carpers found a significant error, now repaired, on the first day, but:

But. I can't see anywhere this is going, with the provisional cast-on and all, but to have a wide hem at the top with the entrelac on the outside. Shouldn't there be a purl ridge for the turn? Am I going to be reknitting all that green to put one in? (And why the garter rectangles? The color is enough -- and Koigu is even the recommended yarn for this pattern -- that the texture isn't necessary.)

Also: my gauge is WAY off. I magic loop tight, but I DPN loose, and this is already an inch and a half too wide. As long as what's knitted so far is the top of the cuff, that's fine. My calf muscles will appreciate the shaping, and since I have 3 skeins of Koigu, I should be able to make the leg long enough to get, hmm, eventual fit.

I'm sort of hoping that the rest of the sock will be pretty plain, so that I can just Stashbuster Spiral the body in the 3 colorways of Koigu that I'm using. (The color situation is just my personal nightmare. Don't let it bother you. Too much Koigu, all in singleton skeins.) But it seems likely enough that I'll want that purl ridge that I don't even want to start the second cuff.

Still, it's spawned one idea: can't you see a silly girly hat? Maybe in some of the Ella Rae Palermo I have sitting around... a quick scan of Ravelry didn't turn up anything using garter entrelac points to get a crown-like brim. HMMMMMMM.

Plus it's just fun to be speculating like this. What is the designer thinking?

Axioms

0. Finishing is better than starting.

1. Knitting is better than blogging about knitting.

2. Blogging about knitting is better than reading other people's knitblogs.

3. Reading other people's knitblogs is better than shopping for yarn.

Tonight I'm knitting, although it's on something new. (And basking, still, from a compliment I got on a pair of stripy socks.)

Pulling it all together

Via Jo (who has been writing from time to time about her knitting) I've started reading Casaubon's Book. This old entry, on her knitting forbears, and on how the author started knitting again as an adult, just blew me away -- a moment of living fully in the complications of someone else's past (instead of the complications of my own, which are becoming all-consuming again).

Meanwhile I've got startitis and have bought too much yarn online etc. etc. I was going to bitch about Firestarter -- why, especially, is it written for only one size, namely, TINY, at least at my gauge, when it would have been pretty easy to include modifications for a 66 or 72 stitch start -- but then Yarnissima herself caught my project up at Ravelry, and asked to include it among the many lovelies knitted by others on the pattern page, and my annoyance melted away. That's my blurry orange thing up there on display!

(This is even the bad side, the one where I made even more mistakes in my bumpy bumpy bumpy twisted stitches.)

The yarn is Crown Mountain Farms Sock Hop, handspun by happy (I hope) elves. I love it to tears -- and yet, the little devil on my shoulder keeps complaining about the orange thing. That was all they had left by the time I made it to the site, see.

Not snippy at all

Ordinarily I get all snippy about patterns. Why did the designer do this in that silly way? Why, I could do better myself. I'd get rid of that seam. Make this stitch pattern element line up with that shaping. Or why not put a lovely edging on the whole thing?

(The answer, by the way, is generally BECAUSE IT WOULD BE A GIANT PAIN IN THE BUTT TO DO IT THAT WAY INSTEAD, as I discover when I try modifying whatever it is.)

But the Modern Quilt Wrap? I love the design more and more and more as I get further in.

The match of yarn and pattern? Perfect. Look, it's just hard to knit with Kidsilk Haze. The garter is dead simple and makes the fabric a little heftier in its fluff, while the the modularity keeps the number of stitches being wrestled with at any one time nice and small.

The distribution of colors? More careful than it first appears. And the variation in stripe width from square to square, and from stripe to stripe, keeps it from feeling too regular. (For both I'd love to know if the designer planned it, or just knitted and then took notes on what she'd done.)

Running the blocks of small squares on the diagonal keeps any tension weirdness well-distributed through the wrap. And alternating direction on the mitered blocks also helps balance out any drift, while keeping the overall feel pleasingly irregular (see, varying stripe width).

May particular version has some weirdnesses. I made the first row of blocks solid Drab, first because it was supposed to be swatch out of stash, but then because I thought it would look good. But I made it mirror image. Since it's solid I don't think it matters much (and I'll probably do the other end, if I ever get there, as a solid block of garter), but still. And I've had to monkey a little with the colors. I have only six, so some are paired -- avoiding adjacencies is non-trivial.

Didja see...

... this New Yorker cartoon from a couple of weeks ago? Quoth Beaker, "Is there some secret knitting meaning to this cartoon, or what?" Um...

... also, the Freakonomics guys in the Times Magazine this weekend, on the mysterious allure of activities like knitting that used to be real, necessary work but are now hobbies. It seemed like an especially relevant read for a weekend split between reading Nancy Bush's little history of the hand-knit stocking industry, laundry, cooking, chasing the small one, and knitting... plus, I do worry about why I knit.

Progress

The first happy sock, with its afterthought heel, is done! My goodness, am I happy with the heel.

And I've gotten through the toe on the second one.

I'm not sure what's going to happen with the top bindoff. I tried something annoying from this page (its only virtue was that I could remember the directions from my first skimming, and hence didn't have to get off the couch to try it) and I'll try something different on the second sock. If I like the second one better I'll redo the first.

My efforts to bend Silk Garden Lite to my will hit a low point:

but have since rebounded:

And, although I have managed to not cast on another sock, I did start winding the yarn.

Variegated or striped? (Answer below the fold.)

The duck has second thoughts

The duck is concerned. Why, he asks, if this is your fun-and-relaxing knitting, is that thin green stripe there? And why are you about to pick it out?

Well, it just happens to be where the heel should be.

The duck says...

... you need some socks that won't get you down.

Get yourself that fun stripy yarn. Don't try anything funny with it. Just knit.

Mashup: A Simple Baby Cardigan for Merry?

Here's something that's not going badly!

Or maybe it's just that I can live with the couple three mistaken crossings, especially since the cable-down-the-raglan-line has turned out well...

... and the stockinette is also much smoother than I usually manage. I'm leaving each purl stitch on the tapered part of the needle as I start the next one, and that seems to be enough to keep them as (excessively) tight as my knit stitches.

The idea here is to put the nifty Arwen reversible cables onto a baby cardigan. anny purls did this already, but she did bottom-up, full Arwen-width cables, and fingering weight yarn. This is DK-weight, three-strand cables, and top-down—swatch measurements  told me how to get the same dimensions as the Knitting Pure and Simple Easy Baby Cardigan, despite the horizontal compression from the cables.

Finishing steps I fear: grafting the hood (yes, across the cables), and achieving a nice hem on a bind-off edge. The apparent difficulty of the latter is a pretty convincing argument that I should have gone bottom-up after all.

There are two sides to every swatch

Rowan Cashcotton DK feels like it's been spun out of dryer lint, at least while it's being knit. It also looks like it's been preloaded with cat hair—perhaps the angora took up less dye than the other fibers? It's fortunate that the eventual recipient owns a light gray cat.

Right! That's why I avoid flat-knit stockinette in solid colors: my purls and knits are completely different sizes (see the top center patch of the swatch, especially), so it always looks like hell.

The ribbing trick does in fact get you reversible cables, and I can believe it'd be quite nice in a loosely-knitted scarf or baby blanket; something where you want stretch more than you want pop. But oh, thank you, thank you, to the crazy designer who charted out the borders for this sweater, and to the knit blogger (found in a frenzy of Googling and now lost again) who said just enough that I was able to figure out how it works^*. That three-strand reversible cable is a joy to execute, looks fabulous, and makes a really nice flat stable border for the fabric.

The non-reversible cable is me trying to figure out how to run a simple two-strand down the increase line of a raglan sweater. Perhaps misguided, but I'm going to go for it. Minimal purl border, like one stitch, and careful choice of directional increases seem to be key—the part that's scrunched on the stitch holder  looks better than the part you can see.

^* Look, I'd love to buy the magazine. But Guns'n'Noro down the street from my office doesn't carry it, and yes, I could get it online, I'll toss it in the next time I order yarn, but I was impatient.