Fiddly but Fabulous

Back in the day when I was knitting nothing but socks, I was a very fast sock knitter. Now, though, it seems I've become a sweater knitter, so socks go slowly. In any case, I have a finished pair that I'm very pleased with, in spite of the fact that they seemed to take an inordinately long time to knit.

Pattern: Rubus suberectus Socks from The Knitter's Curiosity Cabinet, Volume I, by Hunter Hammersen
Yarn: Rowan 4 Ply Soft (100% wool), color 387, two skeins
Needles: 40" US 1 (2.25 mm) ChiaoGoo Red Lace circs
Started/Completed: March 21/April 25
Mods: adjusted the toe (see below)

After having the book for a while and flipping through it from time to time to drool over the pictures, I finally decided it was time to knit something from it after the sudden loss of several pairs of socks. These socks seemed like the easiest to start with because they had the most manageable chart (my smaller projects are worked on during my lunch break at work, so I prefer not to have to deal with a large chart if I can). It took me a bit of time to make sense of the pattern, but once you realize how Hunter is explaining it, it makes perfect sense. The chart shows one pattern repeat of each direction -- if you look at the photo below, you can see that the pattern is mirrored so that the wraps go to the left on one half of the sock and to the right on the other. This means that you have to repeat a set of stitches in the chart a set number of times and then repeat the rest of the stitches a set number of times. It's sort of hard to explain, but it makes sense when you see the pattern.

The stitch pattern is essentially a 4x1 rib with some elongated stitches that are passed over adjacent ones and some yarnovers thrown in for a bit of lace. It was rather fiddly to do at first, but once I got the hang of it and had the pattern memorized (by the time I got to the foot of the first sock), it went much faster. The ribbing is used on the heel flap.

My only major modification was to adjust the toes because of my unusual row gauge. Normally with sock yarn I expect to get about 10 or 11 rounds per inch; with this yarn, I got 13. That meant that if I followed the pattern as written, I'd end up with socks and toes that were much too short. So I started the toe a little later (at 1.5" less than my desired length) and worked the decreases every other round until I had 18 stitches left. This resulted in a perfectly fitting toe, and I rather like the look of the ribbing on the top.

As to the yarn, I really enjoyed working with it. I bought it years ago in a sale, probably at a store where I no longer shop, and it had been sitting in my stash ever since. It's actually a shame that it's discontinued, because it has great stitch definition. It's a cabled yarn, meaning it's composed of multiple strands that are already plied, so that means it also does that weird thing where one side of the stitch looks larger than the other in stockinette. I'm not too concerned about it being noticeable, however -- I mean, who's going to be looking at the bottom of my foot?

Tomorrow morning, I am headed out bright and (relatively) early to head down to Maryland Sheep and Wool for the weekend. I'll be wearing my Ravelry pin, so if you're a reader and happen to see me, please say hello! Though I'll be back on Sunday afternoon, I'm taking Monday off from work to recover (and likely clean the house), so I'll be sure to post with a full recounting of the event and my acquisitions.

Closing In

I am so close to finishing my two main projects on the needles. I spent all of my knitting time last night working on my second Vitamin D sleeve, and as a result, I now have approximately 40 rounds to knit before it's done. I was a very good knitting and wove in all the other ends before I started the second sleeve, so as soon as I bind off, I'll have only two ends to weave in to be officially done with this sweater. Assuming that can happen tonight, it will have taken me exactly 28 days to knit this sweater -- not bad considering my knitting time is limited and this is a sportweight sweater.

Fourth skein just joined last night!

While I've been thinking about finishing this sweater, I've also been tending to my already-completed ones. The weather is now more reliably springlike, which means it's just about time to pack up my sweaters until the fall. I usually wash them all before I pack them away (to get rid of any dirt and body oils that might attract you-know-whats), so I started that process over the weekend. On Sunday, I washed my handspun aran and my Calligraphy Cardigan. Last night, my Blue Betty and my FLS went into the tub. I'm trying to wash sweaters together that are a similar color to prevent any dye bleeding, and two at a time seems to be a reasonable number. I have four "blocking towels" (old ones that I use to roll up the wet handknits) and am using two for each sweater. They get pretty soaked, and the sweaters take a couple of days (at least) to dry, so I'm aiming for two sweaters every other day. At this rate, I should have everything washed in two to three weeks. There's something so nice about going through all my handknit sweaters.

In addition to the new sweater I will have in a matter of hours, I'll also soon have a new pair of socks to work into the rotation (because while it's no longer really sweater weather, my feet are still cold most of the time). My second Rubus suberectus sock is cruising down the foot and should be finished by the end of the week. I can usually get about two repeats of the stitch pattern done in one lunch break, and I have only 2.5 repeats (plus the toe) left to do.

With these two projects about to be wrapped up, the natural question to ask is, of course, "What next?" I can't cast on for my Mad May project until next week, though of course there's some swatching to do. My lunchtime knitting will become socks out of the experimental handspun, which will be fairly simple (basic stockinette, though I'm planning to do something to the sock knit with the opposing ply yarn so that I can tell them apart). As to the bigger project, I think I've convinced myself that I should spend the next week working on my handspun Breezy Cardigan again. The last time I picked it up, I had finished the body and started the first sleeve. There really isn't all that much knitting left to do -- two sleeves and the ribbing on the fronts and around the neck -- but I find that I get bored with this project if I work on it for two long (mainly because progress is so slow even when I put in a lot of time on it). I would really like to finish this at some point this summer so that I'll have it ready to wear in the early fall. I think if I can work on it in small chunks of time as a way to break up longer stretches on other projects, that might actually happen.

Anticipation

I finally made it out to knit night last night -- I hadn't been in a month -- and it was so nice to have some dedicated, uninterrupted knitting time. I made decent progress on sleeve #1 of my Vitamin D, although it seemed like the sleeve was going a lot slower than the body went. I had to knit to 8 cm before I started the decreases, and it seemed like it took most of the time I was out to get to that point.

Now, however, I'm two sets of decreases in (out of a total of eight) and things seem to be moving more quickly. I'm working the sleeves in the round (the pattern has them written flat and seamed, which I really didn't see the need for) and will probably extend them to be full length rather than three-quarters.

I'm also zooming ahead on my socks and have finished the leg and started the heel flap of sock #2. Now that I've got the pattern memorized and don't have to refer to the chart, I can get in a few extra rounds during my limited knitting time at lunch.

Please excuse the phone picture

I'm anxious to have a new pair of socks in the rotation because, shortly after publishing my last post, I realized the socks I was wearing were developing thin spots in the exact same spot in the heel flap. This really surprised me, because these socks aren't as old as the others and did have a reinforced heel -- not to mention that I didn't wear them all that often (largely because they've always been hard to get on, not having much stretch, and always felt a little crunchy to me).

As much as I'm anticipating having a finished sweater (which I'll need now that the office air conditioning is on at full blast) and a new pair of socks, what I'm really getting excited about is my lace shawl design class with Kirsten Kapur this Saturday at my LYS. It's a three-hour class, so there should be a lot covered. Designing lace has always been one of my personal goals and I'm really excited to see what I can do after the class is done. I have a huge pad of graph paper, colored pencils, and stitch dictionaries at the ready. Expect a run-down of the class after the fact!

Postscript: I want all of you who have encouraged me to darn the socks (or even offered to do it for me!) to know how much I appreciate it, but it isn't going to happen. Assuming I still had the small bits of leftover yarn that corresponded to these three different dyelots, I'd have to find them in the stash -- a Sisyphean task if ever there was one. Frankly, I'd much rather repurpose what's left of the socks and knit some new ones. There are so many full skeins of sock yarn in my stash that have been waiting for years to be used!

Miniscule Progress

I have a confession to make: I've barely touched my Vitamin D since my last post.

There's a good reason for this, I promise, and it has nothing to do with the sweater or my interest in it. On Tuesday, I got a movie in the mail from Netflix that I knew would not appeal to the Mister at all (Mao's Last Dancer, if you're interested -- it has ballet and subtitles, so that's a double whammy as far as he's concerned). That meant that I'd be watching it on my laptop with my headphones, and as my laptop is usually set up next to my spinning wheels, that meant sitting in my spinning chair. Now, I suppose I could have knit there if I really wanted to, but usually when I watch something on my laptop it's when I'm spinning. And I thought it would be a good opportunity to get through some of that fiber that wasn't spinning up so well. I was able to finish up the first bobbin's worth and make a good start on the second. I didn't get to start the movie early enough on Tuesday night to watch it all before bed, so I finished it up last night (and got to my third bobbin in the process).

The movie was good and I'm happy with the spinning progress I made, but I didn't sit down to work on my Vitamin D until after 9 last night. Since you saw it last, I've added two more straight rows and the first radial increase row for the body. I will show it to you again when it looks significantly different; I'm hoping to put in a lot of time on it this weekend.

I did, however, finish a sock!

This is the first Rubus suberectus sock; I finished up the toe at lunchtime today (though unfortunately I completely forgot to put the second ball of yarn in my bag so I couldn't cast on for the next one). Because of my crazy row gauge, I did have to modify the toe. I started at 1.5" less than the total length and worked the decreases every other row until I got to 18 stitches. I also worked one more row of the pattern before starting the toe (the pattern says to start it after completing a pattern repeat) because I didn't want to do the first instep decreases using a yarnover. I did something similar on the leg before starting the heel flap.

This sock took me a decent amount of time to knit considering how quickly I've knit some in the past, but now that this one is done I've got the stitch pattern pretty much memorized, and I think the second one will go a lot faster. I've really enjoyed the pattern and have even preordered The Knitter's Curiosity Cabinet, Volume II (there's a pretty good deal on the print book plus digital edition if you order right now -- you get a couple of free individual patterns, too!). I may never have time to knit all the patterns in these books that I want to, but they sure are beautiful to look at!