Life is Hard and my Rebellion Continues

I finished the rebellion sweater for V with my little embellishment. She will probably never willingly put it on. I admit to being a bit gutted but I mean, I don't know what I expected. It's not really her problem that I was excited about this sweater!

With the last of the yarn, I crocheted a quick little trivet. If I backed it with a flat round, it might make a nice all-purpose hot pad. A little pattern idea to noodle on.

Anyway, not content with my little sweater rebellion, and riding high on birthday fumes, I pulled out two more rebellion projects from the depths of my Hell Pile. The purple is some Rastita in Dewberry, now discontinued, my Aethercopter now with the band completed and joined. Just 2 full skeins of lace left to go, with a picot bind-off. I still find all of the partially felted Malabrigo single ply lovely to work with. 

And the second is a WIP that I wasn't happy with. The Ursina by Jacqueline Cieslak. I was intending to make the cropped version, and after finishing the body, I tried it on with my favorite high waisted pants and it was an awkward length on me. It exposed not like, a strip of tummy, but rather an eye-shaped pointy oval of tummy. I debated with myself but ultimately, I wanted a few more inches on the body. I really did unpick an entire tubular bind-off and frogged 5 inches (ish) of half-brioche ribbing to put it back on the needles. In the picture, there's a bronze removable stitch marker at the original length, so I've added 4-5" now. I'm so gun-shy about re-doing it again that I haven't convinced myself to switch to the triangle detail to finish the body yet. But then again, I've used all but one skein of my yarn and need to move on at some point so I can get a decent sleeve length at the end of all this. Yarn is FibraNatura Cobblestone in Mallard.

 

The Year of the Sock Q1

 

Turns out, after all that, I have like nothing to say about these.

Left to right, patterns are Heinz, Fibonacci, none, none none. Yarns are miscellaneous stash, ranging from SWM/Nylon, MCN, Wool/Nylon, Merino/Nylon/Silk, Cotton/Wool/Nylon

4 of these are ostensibly for my feet, and the one enormous pair on the far left is for my partner.

My favorite pair to knit is probably a tie between the middle pair, and the green/black Fibonacci pair. My most worn pair thus far is the Kroy FX pair on the far right. They are the thickest as well, and when I made them I used up all of the yarn. 

In construction terms, 3 of them are top down: Heinz, Fibonacci, and the blue/orange/green striped pair. They use, in order, a heel flap & gusset (x2) and a strong heel.

The remaining pairs are toe up using, in order, a short row heel with gusset, and a heel flap and gusset. I spent some time experimenting with placement of the reinforcing stitch for the pairs on the far right, the three on the left totally lack reinforcing stitch. It's an interesting selection of socks and techniques, but the only thing it can tell me is what I personally prefer.

My toes are not long, so the wedge toes that start/end wider fit me better. I like a star toe with extra gores and that obfuscate the spiraling decreases/increases. And my insteps are high enough to absorb quite a lot of extra gusset fabric before bagging out. I think in the next three months, I'll be continuing to experiment with toes and heels, and gussets. And if my partner is lucky, maybe one in five pairs can continue to be for them.

Oops All Cast-On

 So I really want to pluralize cast-on as cast-ons, but I'm fairly certain it should be casts-on and I don't like that either. Sometimes the frenchified english grammar rules we have really don't sound right.

That's why I'm pretending it's more like moose/moose, one cast-on, multiple projects cast-on, yeah?

Either way, I did indeed finish my Heinz socks and immediately get the Necker pair on the needles. And my rebellion cast on is the Aethercopter by Jocelyn Tunney. It's another handful of balls from my "pending pile" bucket and it has the side benefit of being just a lovely color and perfectly suited for a friend. Tomorrow or Saturday, I'll get a first quarter round-up post written about the whole, Year of the Socks thing, and how many pairs I managed to complete in Jan-March. But for today, I'm weaving in some ends, looking at my WIPs, and planning my focus projects starting in April. 

I've got the second sleeve on my sweater for V, this lovely scarf I just cast on, (of course more socks) and preparing for the Romi Hill MKAL that begins in April. I've got my yarn choices to wind, or maybe supplement, anything is possible. I've also got to get gearing up for my very own pattern release and test knit of a mitten pattern I'm calling Hare Tracks. And a draft of a headband pattern that I have about 5 samples done on.

My first love is knitting other designers' work, and I think writing patterns is a bit like writing everything else. I want to be a good knitter, a good reader, and a good writer. So I find myself putting the less fun parts of designing on the back burner... the writing, the polishing, the publishing, the testing. Anyway, one of my goals for April is to get those two patterns ready to publish.

The Year of the Sock, the Rules

 The end of March is probably the best time to go ahead and explain what I meant when I decided this was the year of the sock.

It's pretty simple, I have an extant copy of Op-Art Socks by Stephanie Van Der Linden, written for generally, the 2 circulars sock knitting method, and I have a lot of self-patterning sock yarn. I also have essentially 2 long circulars for sock knitting. So on one of my long circulars, I've got a magic loop Op-Art sock pattern going, and on the other I've got a vanilla sock going. The circles of socks. It's pretty tidy.

I was using my DPNs for my on-the-go vanilla socks before I realized how stupid that was (missing needles anyone?) and went ahead and used magic loop for those too.

After yesterday's finish, I pulled another ball off The Pile and went with a moccasin toe.

I thought it might be fun to have the stripes be a bit morphed on the toe to look vertical in the center, and resolve into horizontal stripes as the sock grows. Hence the moccasin toe. 

And when I finish Heinz, I'll likewise cast on my next pair from the book immediately. I'm thinking Necker to continue my little sequence through the book. 

So far I'm knitting more vanilla socks than I am of the highly patterned socks by Van der Linden, which I think is only to be expected. But who's crying about it, the more socks, the merrier my sock drawer.

Sisters, not twins

This pair, is not identical. I don't make too much effort to have identical self-striping socks, if I'm being honest, they almost always appear to match to the casual observer. When you take the little tubies and put them on your real, meaty legs, there's shoes and possibly pants involved. Maybe some walking and other activities...people are only really getting glimpses of the socks in question. They have the same colors and apparently the same stripes, nobody's going to question.

But this pair has a little history, so this pair matches even less than normal.

I try to live in the reality where seasons of life come and go and accept it. Might even say radical acceptance of it, if that phrase didn't make me grit my teeth so hard. In the season of life where I originally cast on the first sock of this pair, my family of origin loved me and valued me for myself and my skills. And to that end, when someone lamented the lack of handknit cotton socks, I thought...I could do that.

She wanted me to show her how I made them, and I did, even though I knew she wouldn't remember. She had clear signs of memory loss then, and it's bittersweet how clearly I remember trying desperately to get anyone to listen to me about the changes happening for her. 

But I made that sock and I have carried it with me, made to fit another person's foot. 

In this season of life, I've been rather materially abandoned by my family of origin. There are a lot of reasons, but much of it is wrapped up in inter-generational trauma, that old chestnut. 

I thought about making the second sock exactly the same and mailing it out, without a return address. Maybe that would be a fitting send-off to this small leftover from the tie we shared. But then what, there's no metaphor there that suits me. There's a lot of little bits I carry around from the ties that I thought bound me to people that loved me. Shall I cast them off? 

Anyway, I ripped the sock back to where I started the heel and decided to add a bit more length, and turn the heel again. But it was too short still. So I ripped again, and knit again. And ripped again, and knit again. I think I still made it a little too short for myself, but it fits alright and I'll wear the pair. 

The reason they don't match is that when I made the new version to suit myself, it needed more yarn, so I've got an extra join and a misplaced stripe in one of the socks. It's okay, growth needs a bit of room and a bit of misplaced stuff, right? At the end of the day I'll be visibly a bit worn and mended, but still fitting, still made to be what I need for myself, and for my family by choice. I don't know, perhaps it is a bit forced to find all this symbolized in a pair of silly striped socks, but I felt some of it leave me while I was knitting these. All the mess and rejection knit into the stitches and less tangled into my own brain.

Things Change

 

I never really got "on board" for any mystery knit-along before the past calendar year. There are a few reasons but many of them are about being picky with a result, and a few unfortunate brushes with a lack of tech editing (or missed mistakes in a test knit type of thing). But over the past couple of years, I've really gotten to where I enjoy a good mystery.

One of the reasons is the community. I'm not a particularly great community member, but the last few years have been hell on connection for a lot of us. And even if not specific or directed at me, I get a nice little boost from the parasocial aspects of an MKAL. Like, browsing a hashtag or a forum post reminds me that "here are all these people" and we're all knitting the same stitches. 

Romi is promoting this year's MKAL shawl and I think I probably will jump on board again, and choose one of the above combinations out of my stash. Just a little update x.

But will it fit?

 

Yep! 

It's tough to measure a tiny one, and it's tough to measure someone long distance, or verify that they are measuring themselves correctly. It's tough to talk about ease and fit with people who don't craft. The best thing in the world is to find a top they already like, and measure it flat. Knitting is stretchy, it doesn't have to be exact.

I believe it was Dita Von Teese who said that when she worked at a makeup counter, she would take off a customer's makeup and do it all over again, the exact same way, but with the products she was trying to sell. If giving a gift is an act of love for another person, I think one of the best ways to go about it is to take a little lesson from Dita. Find the thing they already love, and give them your best version of it.

The most critical things to take note of are shoulder width, bust width, torso shape, hem length, and sleeve length. Every person I know will wear something not quite right if it fits exactly how they like.