Har Dee Har Har

My yarn thinks it's soooooooo funny. It could not stop playing practical jokes on me. Ha freakin ha.

The sock on the right is the first Gypsy Girl sock. This one knit like a dream. I fooled around a little with stitch counts between the leg and the cuff to get a decent barberpole going, but this was a pretty minor fuss considering what the yarn had planned for me.

The sock on the right is the one that was frogged and re-knit umpty-eleven times. The leg is knit from the same yarn as the first sock -- same ball of yarn, I should say -- and if you look closely, you'll see differences in stripe width and a weird color jag at the top of the cuff. Ha ha.

The second sock's foot is knit from the second ball, which tried to make me crazy in the head by pooling and blocking and doing everything but barberpoling. Tee effin hee.

But wait, you say. The foot of the second sock is barberpoling.

Yep. And that's the biggest practical joke of all.

Every. Single. Time. that I knit this yarn, it did weird blobby blocking things in the color. I knit from the inside and the outside of my ball, and got the Exact. Same. Results. This is the whole reason I knit the leg of this sock from the first ball and planned a yarn join somewhere around the point that the disobedient yarn could be covered by my shoe. I don't usually like joins in my socks. One of the advantages of socks is that you don't have to splice or weave. But I could think of no other alternative that would yield sorta matching socks.

After all the game playing, I had to rewind the second ball because all that knitting and frogging from inside and out had turned the ball into a child's crayon scribbles. I already told you about that. An hour and a half project. Sooooo funny, yarn.

And so, with the newly wound ball in hand, I set about to switch yarns just above the heel, and lookee there. Barberpole.

I didn't have to beg, cry, change needles, change stitch counts, or sacrifice any small farm animals to the knitting gods.

It just striped.

All by itself.

Very, very funny.

Ha.

Ha.

Ominous Stripes

Here's the second Gypsy Girl barberpole sock. At first glance, those of you who remember the first sock might think this one is a match to it. It's not. When this one is done, I'll post a picture of the two socks side by side so you can see the differences.

But the good news is that it's close enough. I had enough leftover yarn from the first sock's skein to knit most of this leg. If you look closely, just to the left of the needles, right in the middle, you'll see a bit of a jagged jog in the black stripe. This is where I changed yarns to the second skein.

Changing yarns took, oh, about nine hundred hours.

Well. Yeah. That might be a slight exaggeration. But it took a long time.

The problem? I have knit and frogged the yarn in that second skein so many times -- double digit frogging, pulling from both the center and the outside -- that the skein was a tangly blob of technicolor jello.* Not so good for knitting, though oddly enough, it proves irresistable to both children and adults. Everyone who saw it wanted to unwind and rewind it. Several times, if I would let them. Which probably explains the tangles better than the frogging, come to think of it.

In desperation, after trying to knit from that mess yet again, I hauled out my swift and winder last night, skeined the yarn onto the winder, and wound a new neat ball.

That sounds so simple when you describe it like that. But it took almost exactly as long as two episodes of "Mad Men" on On Demand. Am I the only one addicted to this show despite the fact that there is not one single admirable character in the cast? They are all horrible awful people and I long for Don and Roger to spontaneously burst into flames. Then Red will light her cigarette from their smoldering remains and go have sex with a stranger. If they can pry her out of her sausage casing dress, that is.

Wait. Where was I?

I had to keep stopping the skeining process to detangle everything. And let's not forget, I have the world's worst ball winder. All it takes is the slightest stutter in the swift for the entire mount to come flying off the gears and go skittering across the room. At one point, the yarn was wrapped around and through the gears, tangled so badly that I thought only a scissors could save it. Or maybe a flamethrower. Either one.

So, what, about 90 minutes? Give or take. To wind off a ball of yarn, which is usually around a 3-minute process.

Knitting is fun, right? Right???

* Despite the repeated frogging, despite the constant handling, the yarn itself remains in pristing condition. It was only the ball that was a mess. I really do love this yarn. Really. Gypsy Girl rocks.

Twelve!

Good Lord, are we still doing this?

I guess we are. The count now stands at:

Twelve socks.
Five pairs plus two as-yet-unmated socks.
Two socks OTN.
Something like 20 days remaining.

The above pair is knit in Socks That Rock mediumweight, colorway Lagoon, on size 1.5 needles, at a gauge of around 7.5 stitches to the inch. This is bigger than my usual sock gauge, but the finished fabric is denser because of the heavier yarn. I like it a lot. The private side of the sock feels very smooth, almost as smooth as the knit side. I may try for a similar density in future socks. I'm betting the smoother purl side will make for a more comfortable sock, not that the purl bumps generally bother me. But I do sometimes feel them and would prefer not to.

I think the short break to knit the hatpotis and the gauge swatch for Fulmar restored me some. Plus I've been working on my secret knitting--shhh! Don't tell! It's a secret!

In any event, two good sockish things happened today. First, I stopped despising the sight of them. Whew! I hate it when I fall out of love with my knitting. Good thing it never lasts.

Second, I had one of those Doh! moments. Remember the Gypsy Girl sock with the wild zig zagging around the leg? Remember how much trouble I had with the (sigh) pooling? I have this odd barberpole curse that turns all barberpole-striping yarns into something only Piet Mondrian's mother could love. And I'm definitely not Mondrian's mother.

So, after much fussing and tinking and frogging, I finally got a stitch count that allowed the sock to look more like a nicely patterned sock, and less like abstract-geometric art. I happily knit the first sock, then reached for the second skein to knit the second sock.

And, of course, ran into problems that made all the issues with the first sock seem like child's play. I won't tell you how many times I have cast on and ripped out this sock. I will confess to a number in double digits, and that's it. I have tried everything -- varying the stitch count and the size of the needles, pulling from the other end of the skein, everything. And no matter what, the blue and the grey and the black Refused To Swirl.

Obstinate yarn! This is a big part of the reason I've been in an anti-sock mood lately.

Then, this morning, it sort of hit me. I still have close to half a ball left from the first skein. Doh! I'll knit the leg with this, and as far into the gusset as I can get, and then I'll switch to the naughty misbehaving ball. That part goes in the shoe, so who will notice or care?

Well, I will. But I'm just cranky that way.

I still love this yarn. I will be happy to knit with it again. The real lesson in all of this -- a lesson I should have learned before now -- is that barberpoles and I don't play nice together.


One other note. The Shedir Lady passed away earlier today. Thanks to all of you who were so kind and supportive during her final illness. I'm sad that she's gone, but also sort of guiltily relieved. She was suffering. But she's not suffering anymore.

Gypsy Girl Sock

Trying something different to see if the picture will post properly. Or at all.

I have other things to show you -- sock number eight is completed, and here I'm still trying to show number seven. But first I need to solve this blog problem!

Seven!

Seven socks.
Three pairs.
Thirty-seven days.
(Thirty-one if you don't count the days I lost in Dallas.)
Two half-socks.

I am a confirmed flap-and-gusset-heel girl. It's not that I mind short rows. I don't. They're easy and probably faster than a flap and gusset. But I prefer the fit and the feel of a flap and gusset, so that's what I make as a rule.

These socks are an exception to the rule because of the striping. After all I went through to get the barberpole in place, I didn't want to screw it up by changing my stitch count for a gusset. So short rows it is.






















You know how knitter fuss and fiddle at picking up the wraps on short rows? My solution is to not pick them up at all. You get a line sort of like a garter ridge. I'm sure there are purists shuddering at the thought, but it doesn't bother me a bit. Who would even notice that once the sock is on the foot? Not me.

Now that number seven is in the books, I'm starting to eye that jaywalker again. Maybe, just maybe, I might be ready to bail it out of knitting jail. Still debating the foot....

Two Little Stitches

Now that's more like it.

I ripped back, arranged 58 stitches on the needles, and miraculously found the pattern again. Isn't it amazing the difference two stitches can make?

I'd like to point out that this means I officially have four pairs of socks in progress, thereby conclusively proving that I am a faithless whore. I really intended to knit just two socks at a time for the SOS07. One plain, one patterned. I figured that would keep me amused and out of trouble.

Yeah, right.

I have 1) the turquoise Dale Baby Ulls, 2) the Gypsy Girl barberpoles shown above, 3) the Bearfoot Wildflowers plain sock, and 4) the godforsaken pain-in-my-ass jaywalkers. Of course, the Dales are almost done, and the jaywalkers are in jail for conduct unbecoming yarn. So I can sort of fake it that there are only two pairs in progress. But really, in the dark of the night, when it's just me and my unvarnished conscience, I will know it's four.

I'm not sure how I feel about that. Maybe if I just keep knitting, it won't matter.

Barberpole, My Foot!

I have a history of odd results with yarns that are supposed to barberpole. And here we go again.

The yarn is Gypsy Girl in the Stormy Skies colorway, purchased at The Fold on our most recent field trip. (Was that in April?) The yarn is nice overall, but has some slightly undesirable characteristics, one of which is that it squeaks against my wooden sock needles. It also feels a little stiff, which is a feeling I've come to associate with yarns that bleed. It's almost as if you can feel the extra dye in the fiber. I know that's not really what I'm feeling, and that not all stiff and squeaky wools will bleed, but I'll be watching this one the first time I wash it. It feels like the kind of yarn that will soften and bloom in the wash.

Otherwise, the yarn is nice to knit with. It's got a nice, tight twist, a little extra loftiness, and a good woolly stretch to it. I like the hand -- the slight stiffness I described doesn't interfere with the hand at all. The resulting fabric has a slightly rustic appearance, but I expect that will even out somewhat in the wash. I will definitely look at buying more of this whenever we happen to go to The Fold again.

Now, we'll get to see how it stands up to frogging. That blotched, blocky, slanted column effect is simply not going to stand as it is.

When I started knitting it, I was really digging the tight barberpole spiral at the cuffs. Then I switched to regular stockinette and -- sing along if you know the words, cuz you've heard this song before -- the yarn stopped spiraling as I knit it. It abruptly reversed directions, looked like it would spiral the other way, then started make thick blotches of color. The problem is a little more evident in this picture. See the way the black and blue come together? For almost an inch, a good eight rows, the color change forms a column rather than a slant.



















So I'm going to rip back to just above the ribbing and reknit to see if I can get back to that lovely tight barberpole again. Or something kind of like it. I don't care if it switches directions. I don't care if the barberpole wobbles here and there. My only goal is to end up with something that looks more deliberate and less clown-barfy.

And if there's one thing I've learned by now, it's how to manipulate this type of yarn to get a semi-decent effect. So even though I'm complaining some, I'm not really worried. We'll get it there. Plan A -- 56 stitches in plain stockinette on size 1.5s -- didn't work. Plan B (the last two rows, including the row on the needles) was 52 stitches, and it causes the spiral to twist too sharply. You see how above the blue, all the stitches on the needle are grey? It took only two rounds to get that far, and that's too fast. So now that I know that, I'll rip back and go with Plan C, 54 stitches, which ought to produce a result I can live with.

(Side note: I finished the book. Great read!)