Might as well face it...

Might as well face it. I’m addicted to socks.

Knitting socks that is.  I've been a sock knitter nearly since I started knitting in the late nineties.

I started with fat socks as many people do.  For beginning knitters, the size one needles just seem impossible.  So I began with a few pair of worsted weight socks - - warm and cozy in hiking boots.  Then I realized that they didn’t wear very well (particularly in merino).  But it’s okay… I learned the structure of sock.  The heel flap, turning the heel, the gusset, grafting the toe.

But in the last few years, my sock knitting has come along way.  Now even a slightly bigger sock yarn seems awfully large.  I just finished knitting a pair with Paton’s Kroy on what seems like HUGE 3’s for the leg; 2’s for the foot. I’m currently teaching a sock class, to bring other knitters into the fold.

So a little finished object parade, for your consideration…

 Vanilla lattes in Knit Picks Felici

Eirene - Paired cables in Knit Picks Bare sportweight.

 A slow slog of Circle Socks.

 

No pictures for the next few.  Seems if I wait to take pics, I'll never post this. 

3 X 1 ribs in Paton’s Kroy, with both legs knitted at a conference, where I did not see any other knitters.  Very strange.  This was a social studies conference.  At library conferences, there are LOTS of knitters.

There are under construction, with the pause button hit in various places for teaching purposes...

‘Blackberry waffles’ in  Lang Jawoll in a very dark purple colorway that has forced me to knit them under the full spectrum light.

Big fat socks in an unlabeled sock yarn from the FFW sale room.  Kind of a ‘denim blue fake fair isle' pattern.  Maybe Fortissima Colori Mexiko 6 ply.  Maybe.

Happily I have found the Ravelry group, 12 Socks, in which other sock-addicted knitters show  off their work, with monthly challenges.  I won a prize for the February challenge - -more sock yarn!

Random Thursday Bits

Well, it seems that the only way to blog more is too...blog more. So, a few bits of blog...

1. Current knitting is a basic vest of my own design - hand dyed, handspun BFL in my rusty red colorway.  I'm knitting it in one piece to the underarms, then I'll separate the fronts and back.  Deep vee cardi. I'm very close to the separation point

2. I've been spinning a good bit lately, both the red BFL above and it's blue green cousin.  Also, even if the singles have been on the bobbin for and unconscionable time, you can still ply them.  Who knew?  That adds some lovely medium brown and creamy white to the stash.

3. I'm on my second round of sock classes with 2 fine students.  Since I knit along with them, I have (or will have) lots of new socks. Making a serious dent in the sock yarn stash, which is a fine thing.

4. Next weekend is the Winter Retreat at Friends & Fiberworks in Asheville.  Classes, vendors, yarn party all around.  Kind of hoping one of my classes doesn't make so I can take one.

5. Just got a big honkin' order for dyed mohair locks.  Kind of like these...

That's about all we have time for today.  Back to work (lunch hour blogging!  I like it!); then time for the little red Car-Car to get new tires.  Car-Car needs a new pair of shoes!

Still knitting and teaching and dyeing...Oh my!

Well, it's been a month since I posted - a month of a new semester with a good bit of course development work.  Last term when I taught Going to College 101, the freshman kept me on my toes and I pretty much ignored my regular class.  I can't do that too often - I have to get it back up to speed.  I'm also teaching knitting in the Art Ed class.  I think  my students are a bit confused when they see me in the computer lab and I show up waxing eloquently about the glories of wool and other fibers!

Additionally I have begun working at a friend's knitting shop on the weekends and usually an evening or 2 per week.  I have to say that I really enjoy working at the yarn shop.  Friends & Fiberworks is an amazing place.  It's a yarn shop with LOTS of yarn and spinning fiber and there are classes offered several times per month.  They also host a Winter and a Summer Fiber Retreat with lots of different workshops taught by awesome instructors and a number of vendors.   Lisa, the shop owner invited me to put my dyed fiber, patterns and hats in the shop and I agreed to work a modest number of hours per month.  Turns out I really like it!  Helping people with their projects, teaching classes, just hanging out with like minded people is a very nice way to spend a Saturday.

I've been knitting up a storm.  I recently finished the above top-down cardigan made from Peace Fleece yarn in a tweedy grey-green, and am nearly finished with a purple eyelet yoke sweater.  Quite lovely, both.  I have since started a dark red jacket, based loosely on Maureen's Cardigan, but I added cables up the front to break the monotony.  I'm knitting this with Christopher Sheep Co. yarn that I bought several years ago, but never quite got around to knitting up.  So not only am I knitting a warm and cozy sweater, I am virtuously knitting down the stash!  Now this is my kind of knitting: bottom up in one piece and it will be divided  for the armholes.  Sleeve will be knit from the shoulders down.  I'm currently about 10 inches into it after only about a week, so I should be wearing it sometime in the spring. 

This weekend I'm leading an English Country dance, teaching a dyeing class and I'm sure I'll be knitting on my red sweater.  I have a wonderful life!

Success: 30 Hats in 30 Days!

I set a challenge for myself to knit 30 hats in the month of November.  With my hats in 3 shops, I need to keep my production up for the winter hat shopping season and this was a way to stay on or even ahead of schedule.  I did it!  It was close at the end, but I managed to knit a-hat-a-day.  On November 29th, with all 30 hats completed and logged into my handy dandy Excel spreadsheet, I cast on for a felt hat in a style that I've never made before.

I also made an effort to knit from the stash as much as possible and tore through several hundred yards, so I knit down the stash too.  However since part of knitting down the stash required me to purchase more yarns to go with the stash yarns, I didn't get too far out front of that.  But all in all, a fine effort.

Only one tiny problem - a good problem to have.  Almost as fast as I have been making hats, I have been delivering them to stores and they are selling!  Of course that is the point - I can't sell them if I don't have them!  Nor do they sell piling up in a nice stack in the studio.  And as I backed off the spinning, I have very little hand spun yarn to knit my always popular guy hats - so I am still a wee bit behind.

Thanksgiving weekend was busy here at the world headquarters of Smoky Mountain Fibers.  In addition to manic hat knitting, I did a bit of dyeing and carding and spinning.  I also visited a couple of my favorite local yarn shops (one on Black Friday - Hey, 30% off and I bought some lovely silk-merino spinning fiber for a sweater for me!), spun at the Locally Grown Gallery and shipped a healthy number of orders for the Etsy shop (Thank you very much!).

I also painted my bedroom, including 2 coats on the dreaded popcorn ceiling.  I'll spare you pictures.  Although I am very happy with the results, photos of dingy off white with drywall mud over the cracks  and photos of fresh off white aren't really that exciting to anyone other than me.

Tonight is spinning night at Friends & Fiberworks.  I'll be spinning some over-dyed blue-green that looks like a really iridescent peacock. A colorway that will never be duplicated, I can assure you.  Hope the yarn is half as pretty as the roving!

Plain Vanilla in Orange

As the Mossy Cardi is again at a place where I have to think, I started a pair of socks to knit this evening at the SAFF (Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair) board meeting.  No brain strain here, just a simple pair of socks in self striping Sock Colori almost sport weight yarn.  I bought several balls of this when a local yarn shop went out of business a few years ago.  As I am still 'knitting down the stash' (though I have seriously fallen off the wagon of late), this yarn volunteered for duty.

When I knit the psuedo-Fair Isle yarns, I find that I don't like any patterning - not even ribs.  A bit of a cuff, then straight-on stockinette, flap heel and more stockinette to the toe.  With randomly dyed and semi-solid yarns, it's a different story.  But for these yarns, I work on the KISS principle.  I guess I'll put them on Ravelry, but mostly to keep records of sock #1, when I knit sock #2. 

SAFF is shaping up nicely.  Even with a smaller and less-experienced board, we are a dedicated group.  We are willing to try new things, while keeping the things that worked in the past. I have simple but satisfying knitting to keep my hands busy, but not require much pesky thinking.  The creativity flows, but we keep the meeting knitting easy!

Random Tuesday

It's been a while since I posted.  The semester has been a long time ending, but we've put it to bed.  Good night!

The garden is mostly in - and looking great.  Peas are happy and climbing their fence.  The radishes are yummy and everything else is small but sturdy.  We are having a touch of 'Blackberry Winter right now - a cold and rainy spell that hits when the blackberries are in bloom.  A good day for chili.

I made chili for dinner.

Sockapalooza continues.  I finished the Happy Waffle Socks (all but the toes) and begun and nearly finished a pair of Slippin' Stiping' Socks [Rav Link] in a colorway I can only call Carrots and Broccoli - an orange variegated yarn striped with a forest green.  If you like the colors of 1970's appliances, you'll love these socks.  And since I'm knitting from stash yarns, I hae reversed the colorway a bit so that one sock has green toes & heel and the other orange.  It's a bit off-putting, so I think I need to keep them.  In my shoes, no one really expects things to be too normal.

A couple of days in Washington, DC last month found me visiting the National Gallery of Art.  Great shows - I was particularly charmed by the paintings of Hendrick Avercamp.  The exhibition features paintings done in the 'Little Ice Age' of the late 18th and early 19th centuries when the rivers in Holland regularly froze - and life went on.  This delightful group of paintings forced me to spend a bit of time in the galleries that show the Netherland's school.  Quite a change from the contemporary work that usually draws me in. 

I've been dyeing and carding, but not spinning too much.  When I get around to it, I'll have plenty to spin. The local yarn shops have been selling my yarn, so I think it's time to spin again.  Enough with the socks already!  Get to spinning!

Sock-Tastic!

Since my 2010 Stash Knit Down is in full swing, I thought I'd post a short update on my progress.  I finally finished a pair of Hedgerow socks knit from KnitPicks Felici in their colorway Dakota.  After a tiny little mistake about a year ago, these were sidelined.  Obviously the stripes and the pattern are not a great pairing,  This lovely, simple knit and purl almost-lace rib would have shown up much better in a solid or semi-solid.  I promise I'll try this pattern again in a more appropriate yarn.  But they are now complete and ready for the strategic present reserve. 

I'm much more pleased with the Happy Waffle socks.  My all-time favorite sock pattern, the Blueberry Waffle sock, this time in a muted purple-ish colorway that I just love.  A nice no-brainer pattern that really moves along.  Sock #1 is done to the toes.  Sock #2 is about 3 inches long and I have some Dr's office waiting around time this afternoon so I should make some serious progress.

Next week, I will be traveling on business with airport, plane and hotel knitting time.  I am looking for a good sock to knit.  I have a lovely skein of Cushy Color Sport by ColorJoy/LynnH in a semi-solid denim blue.  It's sport or DK weight (I can't remember at the moment), so it should go fast on about a size 3 - huge in sock-world!  Any pattern suggestions?  If so, leave me a comment.

Happy Waffle Socks

I stated a new pair of socks last evening.  I love knitting the Blueberry Waffle Socks pattern by Sandy Turner. It's my go-to sock pattern and has been since I started knitting socks.  It fits well, is easily adjustable to any gauge or foot size and seems to move along quickly.  I think it's the 4 row repeat.  It seems to go by in chunks of about 3/4 of an inch.  At least it does when knit in the original dk weight and size 5 needles.  This yarn is a bit skinnier as are the needles. I seldom knit the waffle pattern onto the instep.  I'm ready to knit in my sleep by then.

This time I'm using Plymouth's Happy Feet, a super wash merino with about 10% nylon.  I love the color combination, poetically called #11 - kind of a subdued violet, gold & teal - very mellow.  Not a great picture here - out of focus, but I think it shows the colors.  I have knit with this yarn before, but hated that colorway, so I took the finished sock and unused skein back to my LYS & traded it for this colorway.  That waffle sock remains a store sample and I pet it every now and again when I visit. This yarn has lived in the Tub o' Sock Yarn ever since.

Since I am now on a quest to Knit Down the Stash and I have a SAFF board meeting tonight, I needed a bit of mindless knitting.  I'll be tracking my progress on Ravelry here.  I've already selected the next sock yarn in the stash, though not the pattern.  Could be another waffle - Watch out!

I am not alone...

Flying Saucers have not landed in my back yard.  It's the de-stash thing.

I found a Ravelry group that is devoted to the knitting from one's own personal yarn shop, called Stash Knit Down [Rav link].  The point is to finish up (or frog) your Works in Progess; sell, give away or donate the yarn you'll never use; knit those projects that you really want to knit and already have the yarn.  From what I've read on the discussion boards, my stash isn't nearly as bad as other people's.  My essential thriftiness keeps me in line.  However I just did my taxes and all those 'but it's for the business' expenses are a bit over the top.  And as I am doing some work in my studio, I had to move all that yarn, so I know how much I really have.  It's not pretty.  Well, it's actually very pretty!

Last weekend I visited Friends and Fiberworks, a new yarn shop here in Asheville.  I wanted to scope it out - one of the owners asked me about teaching some classes.  While chatting, I complemented them on the selection of yarns and fibers (it's very tempting) but apologized that I was 'on a yarn diet.'   They totally got it - the partners are on yarn diets too! At least they are trying, but it's got to be hard surrounded by wonderful yarns, spinning and felting fibers all day.

One way to make it easier to knit down the stash is to make up kits.  Take the yarn and pattern and put it in a zip lock bag.  Place several of these bags on a handy shelf.  Need to knit - a project is there for you!  My personal variation is to make up several kits for my Windy City hat (shown here) and pack them in a tote with needles and stitchmarkers and take the tote to work.  That way I have lunch hour knitting right there.  I even bought a few extra needles so they will always be there when I need them.

So now I have a bit of support.  Don't buy yarn - knit what you already have.  No pictures yet, but remember the yarn from the harvested sweater?  I have already knit 5 or 6 hats that look darn good!  I am trying out designs and having a good time with very nice yarn.  Knitting down the stash can be very rewarding - and fun!