Light and Momentary

Progress!

Three years and seven months after I started them, I have finished knitting my flip-top Broughton mittens. They spent the afternoon and evening taking a bath, which I hope will smooth out the colorwork and magically enlarge them. (One of those outcomes is likelier than the other.)

I still have to do the finishing, which will require me to sew the linings in place, find or purchase correctly sized buttons, tighten up some gaps around the thumb openings, and weave in a whole bunch of ends. It's at least one GBBO episode, and that's if I have the right buttons in the house.

But still! Let's hear it for progress!
 

Socks for beginners

Last night I was texting with my friend Shelley about making socks, and then Heather left a comment on yesterday's post about getting started with socks, so I am going to write a post about knitting socks.

Knitting socks = the best! They are such happy little projects: portable, colorful, varied, and easy to give to your knitworthy friends and loved ones, because just about everybody needs socks.

Choose good yarn -- I love the Schoppel sock yarns myself. You want mostly superwash wool mixed with something tougher for durability, like 25% nylon. Good sock yarn is more expensive than you might expect it to be, because a lot of us are used to buying socks at Target. You are going to spend a lot of hours staring at this sock yarn as it runs through your fingers, so tell yourself that the price per hour of enjoyment is low, not that the price per sock is high.

I recommend knitting socks on two circular needles, or using the magic loop technique on one circular needle with a 40-inch cable. YouTube will show you how to get started with either of those techniques for knitting in the round if you haven't tried them yet. You can also use double-points, but they make your project less portable and you are going to find yourself grumbling about chasing after the one that rolled under the coffee table again. Start with US size 2, which is 2.75mm in non-US locales.

Top-down socks are easier to start with than toe-up socks (or any of the weirder offerings, like this goofy pattern that tells you to start in the middle). Use a long-tail cast-on to set yourself up for working 64 stitches in the round. Make yourself a nice K2P2 cuff. I like to rib all the way down my sock leg to minimize sag, but you can switch over to stockinette after an inch of ribbing if it's easier for you to find a groove with stockinette.

When your sock leg is the length you want it to be, you'll switch for a bit from knitting in the round to knitting back and forth. I found this Wayback Machine link that's very much like my go-to pattern for top-down socks. It will walk you through the heel flap, heel turn, and gusset. Once you're back to 64 stitches, you just cruise down the foot in happy rounds of stockinette until you reach the toe-zone.

Heather asked specifically about socks for Fred Flintstone, and LO, I have a post in my archives called Fred Flintstone's New Socks! (What are the odds? I wonder if I am the internet's leading Fred Flintstone sock blogger in addition to being the internet's leading kraken/bunyip blogger?) Most sock patterns tell you to taper the toe at a 45-degree angle for 1.5-2 inches before grafting the front and back together, but you can just do fewer rounds of toe decreases to get a squarer sock. Heather, you might think about grafting your first toe in a contrasting color so it's easy to unpick it if you want to take another crack at the toe shaping.

If you think you want to try toe-up socks, which are my default these days, here's a post with my sock recipe. The beginning is more fiddly and there's more math and/or guessing involved in deciding when to start the gusset increases, so I suggest top-down for your first pair or two.

90% of a mitten is not enough of a mitten

It was chilly over the weekend and as I was heading out to walk the dog I thought to myself, "I wish I had a pair of flip-top mittens, so my fingertips could mostly be warm but I could have easy access when I needed to do something requiring some dexterity."

"Oh," I said back to myself, "you mean like the flip-top mittens you started making in APRIL 2020?"

I rarely knit these days and I'm not sure exactly why. It used to be that every time I read a book to a kid I'd pick up my knitting, and it used to be that I read a lot of books to a lot of kids. Knitting took the edge off when I was reading the same book for the 427th time, but these days all the people in my household read their own books to themselves. Knitting was something I always reached for if I was watching a TV show, but I hardly ever watch TV shows these days.

Another thing that's changed: I used to enjoy the knitting community. I'm not active on Ravelry these days, and the knitting bloggers I used to follow have all stopped blogging. It's pleasant to talk about progress and frustrations with people who are excited about knitting. It's motivating to see other people's projects and riff on their ideas.

And here's another thing: I can't seem to combine very much knitting with lifting, because it makes my elbow hurt. I'd rather get strong than make socks. But probably I can make a few socks and keep lifting pain-free, right? 

After I wrote the post I linked above, I finished the first two remaining tasks and then I just could not bring myself to pick up stitches for the lining of the second mitten. But you know, it won't actually be that hard. I need bright light and 20 minutes, and then I'll say to myself, "Why did I put this off for so long?"

What's something Stella and I could watch together in the evenings while I ease myself back into the knitting groove? It needs to be something I can catch most of by listening (i.e., no subtitles), and it can't be too creepy or violent because I don't do well with creepy/violent shows. 

Feast or Famine

I did manage to blog every day in July, and then vanished -- poof! We were traveling, visiting my family and going to the single nerdiest place I have ever been, and the two options felt equally weird: either to tell you that my house was empty, or to blog about unrelated stuff when I was mostly thinking about traveling.

But we are back, and thinking about what comes next. 

Part of what comes next is that Pete is leaving for college on Thursday, which I cannot think about without getting a little weepy. You'd think it would get easier to send them off by the time you got to the fourth sendoff, but you'd be wrong about that.

After a long stretch of not-knitting, I took a knitting bag with me on our trip and cranked out some socks. Check out the pair I finished this morning. (I am calling them a pair, but they are fraternal twins, not identical.) 

These are made from a Zauberball: spun from high-quality materials, dyed in gorgeous saturated colors. The yarn is a delight to knit. I am not 100% sold on their degree of matchiness, though. If you see the whole pair you can tell that one sock is approximately the inverse of the other, but when I wear them with pants it will just look like I am wearing mismatched socks. 

It had been so long since I had done much knitting that my enjoyment of the process took me by surprise: the pleasure of cranking out tidy rows of even stitches, the magic of a heel turn, the satisfaction of a perfect fit.

More thoughts on leisure activities that require persistence

Today I came home from work and plunked myself down in the armchair. I picked up a project I started knitting almost 3 years ago, and I said to myself, "I am tired of knitting this thing." It reminded me of my post from earlier this week about books that I have to make myself read: I spend a not-inconsiderable proportion of my leisure time doing things that are more annoying than pleasant in the moment.

This project is a design by Ysolda Teague, a pair of colorwork mittens with some bells and whistles. They have a flip top, they have a lining (pulled out in the picture below), they have a fancypants braided cast-on. Unfortunately, they also have a gauge issue.

This is not my first go-round with Ysolda's mitt patterns and gauge issues. Gauge has bitten me in the butt on two other Ysolda projects, actually.. The last time I made a pair of Ysolda mitts, I started over THREE TIMES in an effort to get them right. But! Alas! I used to have the problem that my knitting was looser than expected, and the finished product would be too big. These mittens, though, are too snug.

I don't get it, actually. My gauge is spot on and I have average-sized hands. Did the pattern get rushed to print because she was trying to wrap up the Colourwork Club? Is there some other weird alchemy where the size can be right and the gauge can be right and the finished item can still be too small? It's a mystery.

Maybe if I tell you what the steps are, I will talk myself into completing them. Maybe they will grow when I block them, or maybe I have a friend with Lilliputian hands who would love them. We shall see. Anyway, here are the tasks standing between me and a pair of completed mittens.

• There are only ten rounds left in the main mitten chart, plus a little I-cord button loop. Painful level: yellow; definitely fiddly.
• Next up: flip-top openings (top and bottom) and thumb. Painful level: orange shading to red.
• After that, the lining. Painful level: yellow shading to green.
• Finally, the finishing-- tidying up, weaving ends, adding buttons. Painful level: fiery flame-bright red. Not my favorite part of any project and this one is extra-complicated.

It's really rare for me not to finish a knitting project, even if it marinates for a while. Which is a little funny, given that in this space I tend to grouse about my knitting more often than I say happy things about my knitting. I grumbled about this selfsame project nine months ago today, as a matter of fact. I wonder if I'd be happier if my leisure time included more purely leisurely things and fewer things that feel like work. Or maybe I am just wired this way. How about you? How much of your leisure time do you spend doing things that you enjoy more in the rearview mirror? Do tell -- I'm very curious.

FO #1

I have been nibbling away at the Princess Bride-inspired stole that I told you about back in November, and yesterday I bound it off and blocked it. (It is not actually trapezoidal, just asymmetrically positioned.)

This morning I trimmed off all the knitted-in ends and wove in the others. Marie was admiring it before she went to work this morning. "I've always loved purple and green together," I told her, "ever since I was young. Not a popular combo, but I love it anyway."

"Yes," she said, "I think most people associate purple and green with the Joker and Green Goblin and characters of that ilk."

So maybe it will read as a supervillain cape to the Gen Z-ers in my world, but I am pleased with it anyway. The pattern is clearly written and nicely structured, with a pleasant mix of easy and intermediate sections. It's a great choice for harmoniously colored fingering-weight leftovers, if you have a collection of your own awaiting their destiny.

Your questions answered, part 1

I am keeping notes on the things you've asked me to blog about this month, and starting with an easy question: Giddy asked me to explain blocking.

When a knitter finishes a project, she will usually block it.This just means giving it a good soak in cool or lukewarm water, and then letting it dry. The details vary with the type of project.

If you are knitting with two colors, they will often look a little lumpy or puckery or uneven during the knitting. I took an in-progress picture of this cowl in February 2020*, and even though I'm very comfortable with stranded knitting you'll notice that it doesn't look its best in this first picture.

Once I bound it off (which required me to figure out that the pattern booklet was upside down in that picture, SIGH), I gave it a bath. A useful tip: when your FO (finished object) sinks to the bottom of the water, you can be confident that the fibers are saturated. Wool naturally repels water, so don't rush it. Once it's well and truly soaked, squeeze it gently and then bundle it up in a towel that can absorb most of the remaining water.

If you're blocking colorwork, find a quiet place for it to dry flat. Just smooth it out gently and leave it alone for a while. Above is an "after" picture for that cowl. To my eye it looks much smoother and neater.

Blocking is especially important for lace, which always looks like a crumply pile of nothing when you are knitting it. When you block lace, you pin it out while it's wet and leave it to dry. This will usually give you a substantially larger FO. Here's an in-progress photo from my last lace project. 

Down below is the blocking photo. It grew at least 25% longer and has retained the length. You might be able to see my blocking wires in the picture -- those allow me to shape an edge or a curve with fewer pins. I did not intend to knit an 8-foot scarf, but -- whoops! -- that's what I did.

Blocking will open out the lace and allow any decorative edgings to look their best.

Does anyone remember the totally bonkers turtle sweater that was two years in the making? It got a very aggressive blocking. If I'm going to knit bell sleeves with scalloped edges, then by golly I want bell sleeves with scalloped edges. The sleeves initially looked like little tiny sleevelets, suitable for Smurfs or house elves but not for a grownup human.

Here you can see the aggressive blocking in progress:

The finished project looks like this. Note that I do not have little tiny Smurf arms, and yet the sleeves fit me just fine. This is the magic of blocking alpaca. If you don't know about this feature of alpaca yarn up front, it may feel less magical and more diabolical.

Giddy asked if crocheted projects required blocking and I'm not sure. Crochet is much less elastic than knitting, and so I would expect blocking to have a much smaller effect. I have only a rudimentary knowledge of crochet, though, so I could be wrong about that. Yarn choices also have an effect on blocking. Animal fibers pretty much always benefit from blocking, but I have heard that it doesn't do much for acrylic yarn.

*Do you find yourself looking back on Jan/Feb 2020 as if you were watching a horror movie, shouting at the screen, "Run away! He's hiding under the bed! Run away!" I don't know where I could have run to avoid COVID, exactly, but I look back at that particular picture and think, Hoo boy, self, you had NO idea what was heading your way.

In progress

Back in the summer I bought a knitting pattern called As You Wish, from a mystery knit-along that had happened in the winter/spring. I have been plugging along, using up odds and ends of fingering-weight yarn. It was a five-week MKAL and I am in the middle of the week 4 clue. Currently it looks like this: 

The pattern is nicely constructed. You alternate half-width blocks of lightly embellished garter stitch with fancier full-width blocks, so that you get a bit of a break between each of the sections where you have to think about the pattern and count your stitches. In the full-width blocks it's mostly slip-stitch patterning, with a little bit of cabling and bobbling. (I hate bobbles. Have I told you this before? My least favorite knitting maneuver. Just one more strip of them, though.)

I appreciate the variety: different colors, but interspersed in a way that makes it easy to knit in the ends; different patterns, with a pleasant balance of plain and fancy; different textures, with enough garter that the finished product shouldn't curl. Here's a close-up (with all those slipped stitches, it will definitely benefit from a good blocking):

I have a boatload of pretty fingering-weight scraps and this has been a fun way to use some of them up. I am even thinking about doing another one in brown yarns after I finish this one. I am finding the unrelenting Princess Bride references a little wearying, even as a hardcore Princess Bride enthusiast, so perhaps I'll need a little palate-cleansing sock-knitting in between. The pattern is 33 pages long, every one of them reeaaaching to make Princess Bride connections. That's a minor quibble with a solid pattern, though. 

For Madame Maxime

When I unpinned my freshly blocked just-finished stole I discovered that I underestimated its length. It is huge. Vast. In this picture I am thinking, "Ah, yes, a shin-length stole -- so practical."

If I were friends with Madame Maxime I might offer it to her. All the half-giantesses are wearing lace stoles this season, I hear.

The pattern says that the finished product is supposed to be six feet long, which seems a little mystifying. I used less yarn than expected, but somehow my scarf is 30% longer than planned? The pattern specs sound just about perfect: 6 feet by 17 inches. If I am making something in the stole/scarf/shawl family, I like it to be a wee bit longer than my wingspan, and I'm 5'6".

I told myself it would go faster if I could just get in the groove and knit the thing -- stop counting down rows, stop grumbling about how I wasn't delighted with the project. And now instead of a stole I am not thrilled with, I have a...curtain I am not thrilled with. Or a carpet? Or perhaps a yurt? It is a lot of fabric, you guys.

Maybe if Madam Pomfrey slips me some Skele-Gro potion in the night and I wake up with arms that are suddenly four feet long, it will be just the thing.

On the plus side, it is very soft, and cloud-light but also warm. Since our temps will be in the 90s for the next several days, warm is more of a bug than a feature at this point. But perhaps by the time it's cool enough to wear it again, I will have figured out what to do with it.

'Tis the Season

In the summer a middle-aged lady's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of WIP-whomping.

It is a summer tradition in these parts. I give you the bulky-weight funnel-neck sweater, just the thing for a steaming Midwestern summer day. Or perhaps the thigh-length alpaca sweater, also finished just in time for my summer sartorial needs? This year's contribution to the archive is an 8-foot wool/alpaca/silk stole. Who among us has not pined, on a sweltering June day, for an accessory constructed with -- BRB, must do some mathing -- three-quarters of a mile of cozy warm animal fiber?

It's not quite done. Yet another quibble I have with this pattern is that the intersections of the stripe pattern and the two lace patterns make it impossible to knit in the ends as you go. It's probably better if I don't think about how much end-weaving I will have to do once it comes off the blocking wires.

Probably Winter Jamie will appreciate it even if Summer Jamie is giving it some side-eye.

A knitting post

You know what we haven't talked about in a long time? Knitting, that's what. This is because knitting has not been bringing me very much joy lately.

Let me show you the things I have been stuck on, and perhaps it will get me unstuck.I can't remember -- did I show you the rectangularized pandemic blanket? Google tells me that I did, back before the ends were woven in. The thing I have been stuck on is deciding whether it needs a border. It has been niggling at me. But as of this weekend I have officially decided that it does not need a border, or at least not in this stage of its existence. We will call it finished, though it may be a temporary flavor of finished. It is so cozy and hefty and pleasing on chilly days. It is less useful in the 90-degree weather we have been having recently.

Here is another pandemic project, which I am going to rename the Make The Best Of It stole. I bought the kit during my fall 2020 sabbatical, right after I submitted paper #2.

I was hoping it would be a fluffy cloud of medium-challenging lacy goodness. I loved the idea of subtle striping and interspersed stockinette panels and two different lace patterns, because all of those things break up the monotony that is baked into a sizable lace stole. But there are a bunch of unsatisfactory things about it:

1. a chart with mistakes in it
2. sections of true lace knitting (i.e., pattern on both sides) with directional decreases. BLEH, SSPs are the WORST decrease and they ABOUND in this stole.
3. an unpredictable pattern in the easier lace sections
4. colors that aren't quite me and that don't quiiiiite work with each other (to my admittedly picky eye) because of pandemic supply chain issues
5. instructions from the designer to do the hardest parts in the yarns with halo -- a recipe for eyestrain for this middle-aged knitter
6. a lace pattern that looks like marching ladybugs, in a creepy-crawly way and not in a charming way
7. failure on the designer's part to throw in any right-side purl stitches, so it is going to curl like nobody's business after I am done investing all these hours in it

So for...hm...20 months now I have been working on it grumpily for a while and then stuffing it into the Timeout Bag when the eyestrain gets too annoying. But I am only 150 rows from the end. I will feel happier if it is done than if it is wadded up in the Timeout Bag, so I will keep nibbling away at it.

Here is still another pandemic project, because this stinking pandemic has been going on for so long that all of my current knitting is pandemic knitting:

This was the third project in Ysolda Teague's 2020 Colourwork Club, and it is a pain. So much finishing. I never get Second Sock Syndrome but I have a whopping case of Second Mitten Syndrome going on here. Maybe it's First Mitten Syndrome, because I keep picking up the first mitten, thinking about how little I want to deal with the finishing (the lining + flip-top combo (shown below) is a nice idea, but it's going to mean a bunch of annoying tidying up), and setting it back down again. Maybe I will take the first mitten to jury duty tomorrow, where they say I cannot have knitting needles but make no mention of tapestry needles.

Next up there are these socks, which have been waiting for a month to have their four ends woven in after spending more than a year on the needles. That is a long time to procrastinate on a 10-minute task.

There is one not-knitting project, a little crocheted amigurumi fox. My niece picked out an amigurumi kit for me a few Christmases ago, and in August of 2020 (again with the lingering projects from the early months of the pandemic!) I made its head and nose and one ear. The trouble with crocheting is that I do it so infrequently that I always have to restart slowly and painstakingly, giving it my full attention. In the past few days I have added a body and a tail to my small collection of fox parts. We shall see how it goes. The jury duty guidelines don't say anything about crochet hooks either.

And then there is the last project, the Extremely Nascent Sweater Back Laden With Sad Memories. It is also from the fall semester of 2020, when Marie's roommate got COVID and I was overflowing with mom worry. I could not speed up vaccine production, I could not make either of their immune systems work any more efficiently, but BY GUM I could plan to swathe my child in Scottish wool.

And then Marie's roommate got better and Marie did not come down with COVID and I thought to myself, "Do I really want to knit an entire sweater on size 3 needles? And does Marie really want a sweater that will have to be hand-washed or dry-cleaned?" And now, 20 months later, I do not remember exactly where I was going with this sweater back. I was using Ann Budd's book of top-down sweaters, but there will be a fair amount of face-scrunching and head-scratching required if I am going to pick up where I left off, or perhaps switch it over into a sweater for me, since I don't mind hand-washing hand-knits and these colors suit me better than they suit Marie. 

Maybe I'll just frog it, huh? What's your vote -- frog pond or face-scrunching?

AFO (stands for Almost Finished Object)

Look at what I bound off today:

This is the Stephen West MKAL that I started in the fall. As you might guess from the number of color changes, I have a lot of ends to weave in. A lot a lot.

Here is a closer view of the diamond section:

This was the section where my will to knit was slowly eroded by the ever-increasing length of those purl rows. The border section was an ocean of garter stitch, capped with an I-cord bind-off on >900 stitches. (All the knitters wince in sympathy.) All in all, the painful level on this one was pretty high. But hey, it's almost finished.

You too can make a pandemic blanket

MomQueenBee commented on my pandemic blanket a few days ago, so this is a post about how to make your own. Take a big pile of worsted-weight leftovers in colors that make you happy. You can also combine sportweight or DK with a strand of fingering if you want more variety, or you can throw in some Aran-weight yarn too. It's flexible.

Start with a mitered square. Cast on 51 stitches (I recommend a long-tail cast-on) and knit back. Knit 24, S2KP, knit 24; turn and knit back. On the next row you'll knit 23, S2KP, knit 23; turn and knit back. On every right-side row, you'll decrease across the three middle stitches. When you're down to one stitch, break the yarn and pull it through the stitch.

To make another square, you will build on your initial square by picking up an odd number of stitches along one side. Let's say I want my second square to be a little smaller: I can pick up 19 stitches, turn my knitting around, and use the cable cast-on to add an additional 18 stitches. After I knit back to my starting point I'll do just the same thing as before, decreasing across the three middle stitches on every right-side row. If I want my decrease line to point in the opposite direction, I can use long-tail cast-on to create my 18 new stitches before I pick up 19 from the existing square. Flexible! So flexible! 

You can also make a mitered rectangle; just bind off your leftover stitches after you have consumed all the stitches on the shorter side. In the picture above, I am knitting a mitered rectangle. Here, I'll add in a close-up so you can see for yourself. In just a couple of ridges, I will have decreased all the stitches on the right side of the decrease line. I'll stop there, and bind off the rest. It will be easier to pick up the next whack of stitches if you use a larger needle for the bind-off. You can make squares or stripes without the diagonal decrease line if you would like to do so: just work plain garter ridges. Combine shapes that please you with colors that please you until your blanket is a size that pleases you. I think I will work a crochet edging because my brain might wither and crumble into dust if I tried to do that many feet of applied I-cord.

This post at MDK contains the picture that inspired me, and if the loosey-goosey-ness of these instructions makes you unhappy, you might find some of Kay and Ann's patterns to be a soothing alternative. Their first book has a couple of different garter stitch blankets with more structured patterns, and they have reworked some of those ideas in their more recent publications. Happy knitting!

A 2020 Ornament

This morning I was talking to an old friend who is in the middle of some hard things. I cannot do anything about the work stuff or the family stuff or the health stuff, but my ears pricked up when she said she had been looking unsuccessfully for a Christmas ornament: she wanted a Santa Claus wearing a mask.

That is a problem I can solve.

I am going to add a pompon to the top of his hat, and I have a bunch of ends to weave in. But he's almost done.

Pete wants me to make one for our tree too, and I think I will extend the mask a little higher (even Santa needs to cover his nose) and make it slightly less rectangular.

I started to write out the pattern, but I got to the short-row section of the beard and the pattern degenerated into "and then I kind of wung it; you can too." I'll pay closer attention next time.

This is not a post about baby hiccups

I had planned to post about knitting progress today, but I accidentally posted a time capsule instead. I republished a post from 2004 when Miriel asked on Twitter for cranberry baking recommendations. Instead of "publish on..." I clicked "publish now." This resulted in a post dated today, chronicling my trip to the zoo with friends and speculating about whether Pete was already having in utero hiccups. As you might imagine, a post about my 20-week pregnancy sparked some confusion. So! If you need cranberry recipes, they should now appear in the correct decade's archives. (I can recommend both the cranberry cake and the cranberry-dried cherry bars (scroll down to #7).) Let us now discuss knitting progress.

Do you remember that I was doing a Stephen West mystery knit-along? I should have known that it would be hard to keep up with the weekly pattern releases, because he told us up front that we needed 500g of fingering weight yarn. That is 1.24 miles of yarn, worked on 3.25mm needles. I was never going to get that finished in a month.

This pattern seems to be focused on exploring fun if not especially cohesive things you can do with slipped stitches. The middle section was a blast, but it has become less fun. The thing about big shawls is that the further you go, the more endless rows of purling are required. Current stitch count: 467 and growing. It's a lot of acreage.

That honeycomb section in the middle is supposed to lie flat, but it is rolling like the dickens. I suspect it will continue to roll even after I smack it around with a steam iron, because it's all stockinette. This is the downside to a mystery knit-along; you can't say to yourself, "You know, I'm going to edge this section with garter stitch so it doesn't roll like all the ones I'm seeing on Ravelry."

Its recipient is enthusiastic, even if its knitter is a little less so at the moment. I still have to finish the checks, the triangles, and the chevrons. I am trying to decide whether the hot pink should reappear for the triangles, the chevrons, or maybe both. I will report back.

Totally fun to knit

I am doing a Stephen West mystery knit-along -- my third -- but I haven't really been enjoying it. I'm behind, so I've been avoiding the Ravelry chat about the pattern, which is part of the fun. I've been having some repetitive strain issues, and one side of the first clue is a tricksy combination of stripes, I-cord, and slipped stitches that messed with my tension in a way I would like to go back and fix. "This is not very fun to knit," I thought to myself. This was a bummer, because "totally fun to knit" could be the hashtag for the Stephen West projects in my Ravelry notebook.

But I have been thinking of the shawl as a birthday gift, and birthdays do not move to accommodate repetitive strain injuries, so I buckled down and finished the first clue with occasional Yosemite Sam swearing moments. Tonight I started the second section, and it is magical. "I am going to knit this FOREVER," I said to myself. "This is the BEST BEST BEST," said some primal part of my brain as it was flooded with dopamine. "Even if it DOES cause Donald Trump to be re-elected," said a part of my brain with a tenuous grasp on logic, "it would almost be worth it." "NOPE, TOO FAR," said all the rest of my brain in emphatic unison. 

I don't know what it is about his patterns, but they make me weirdly happy. The products are often kind of strange, but the process is a joy. Here's a picture for you so you can appreciate the strangeness (and we're just beginning! so much strangeness to come, I have no doubt). As for me, I'm off to knit.

 

Things I have been making

Hurray for a pleasant restful day, in which I chatted with friends and 2 out of 3 faraway kids.

I finished the purple socks and cast on a new pair immediately in a different Zauberball yarn, softer but also a little splittier.

Pete asked if I would bake a Madeira cake. I wasn't sure how much the kids would like it, because it's a little old-fashioned. I tend to make cakes that are fluffier. And this one didn't even rise very high. It's a Nigella Lawson recipe and I think it's under-leavened. I'm not sure how she got the picture in the cookbook with the amount of leavening in the recipe, but life is full of mysteries. In any case, I was not serving it to Paul Hollywood, and so no one but me commented on its un-domed top. The kids thought it was perfect.

I went in search of American recipes to see if my leavening suspicions were warranted, and I found another of life's small mysteries. Converting British baking recipes is a bit of an art because their baking powder is different from ours. "Martha Stewart," said I to myself. "Sounds like a trustworthy source for an American version. I'll check out her recipe."

"Huh," I said to myself, "there is no leavening at all in her recipe. That sounds disastrous!"

And lo, there are a number of angry reviewers saying, "This was disgusting! This was an expensive buttery brick! If I had smacked my neighbor upside the head with this cake it would have ended our years-long feud over the overgrown property-line forsythia!" Much to my surprise, there was also a contingent of happy reviewers, saying, "What's the matter with you whiners that you couldn't bake this easy-peasy cake? It was delicious and perfect!"

So...were the reviewers in group B using self-raising flour by mistake? If so, wouldn't it have been too salty, since the recipe calls for a half-teaspoon of salt? Or...is unleavened cake a thing? I am usually a to-each-her-own kind of baker, but I have to say that would be a weird and penitential kind of cake. Way back in 2002 I made my second child a third birthday cake in which I failed to notice that I was using all-purpose flour where the recipe called for self-raising flour. So I can tell you from sad experience: cake is better with leavening.

Let's talk about something else now

I have had the happiest knitting project on the go for the past two weeks. I took Pete to the friendly local yarn shop and we had ourselves an efficient and socially-distant but also thoroughly enjoyable browse through the German sock yarn. (German sock yarn = the BEST sock yarn.) He chose one I'd never seen before, a Schoppel-Wolle Jeans Ball. It's great to work with, it wouldn't dream of splitting, the color ranges from fully saturated to pleasingly speckled, and it's substantial but not scratchy. All the thumbs up on this yarn. Look, I am almost done with his socks, which are a nicer purple than this picture suggests:

I am a recent convert to toe-up socks. I'd made them before, but only recently did they become my go-to pattern-free pattern. Would you like a toe-up sock recipe? We aim to please around here. This recipe assumes you are using magic loop or two circs, but you can certainly adapt for DPNs if you prefer.

Using Judy's Magic Cast-On, start with 20 stitches divided across two needles. Increase every other round, one stitch in from each edge of each needle, until you have 60 stitches divided across two needles. Work in stockinette until this fetal sock is about three inches shorter than the foot for which you are knitting it. This is the part that used to worry me, but fear not-- it is not an exact science. Now make your gusset. Is there a side that is less pleasing to you? Make that the sole side and increase every other round on that needle, one stitch in from each edge of the needle. For an average-sized woman's sock, keep going until that needle has 48 stitches (78 in total across both needles). If you're working an average-sized men's sock you'll want about 54 stitches on the gusset needle, or 84 in total across both needles. 

Next comes the only fiddly part, the heel. You're going to work a little tongue of fabric on the middle 16 stitches (or the middle 18 stitches for a men's sock; that's what all the parenthetical numbers in this paragraph and the next one are for). So knit 32 (or 36), turn, slip 1 and purl 15 (or 17), turn, slip 1 and knit 15 (or 17), and keep going just like that on the middle segment for 8 (or 10) total rows. Now for the curved bit: knit until you have two stitches left on the needle, then wrap and turn, slipping the stitch right next to the wrapped one before you start purling your way back to the last two stitches. Here again you will wrap and turn, and again you will slip the stitch right next to the wrapped one. You'll keep going in this fashion, each time wrapping the stitch right next to the one you slipped last time, until you have 3 (or 4) wraps in each direction. Knit across, working each wrapped stitch together with its wrap. Pick up and knit 5 (or 6) stitches in the slipped stitches at the edge of your fabric tongue. Slip 1 and purl back, working each wrapped stitch together with its wrap. Pick up and purl 5 (or 6) stitches at the opposite edge of your fabric tongue. Phew! That's the end of the hard part!*

Now you'll make your heel flap, working back and forth across the middle 26 (or 30) stitches and gobbling up gusset stitches as you go. Alternate slip 1, knit 1 across all of those middle stitches until you get to the last stitch before the gap, and SSK across the gap. Slip 1 and purl across to the last stitch before the gap; p2tog across the gap. Repeat these two rows until your decreases have consumed all of your gusset stitches. I like to scoot a stitch from each end of the other needle over to this needle and work one last pair of heel flap rows, because gusset holes make me sad.

And now! Tra-la-la! You're back in the round. Work one plain round and then work the ribbing of your choosing until the length is right for you. Bind off and wave your sock around for all to admire. Bind-off note: for my big kids I use JSSBO and I go up a needle size. For my own socks I just use the stretchy bind-off. Bigger feet seem to require a looser BO.

*If my instructions are confusing, it may help to read the pattern from which I learned to knit a toe-up flap heel. If you're still confused, I've also had success with this toe-up short-row heel.

May 18

I am working steadily on the lockdown blanket, and it has been growing apace. (Well, we might need to define "apace" loosely for the purposes of this post.) 

Two weeks ago:

And here's tonight's version:

Here, let me show you the couch for scale:

I want it to be big enough to wrap up in on a chilly winter day, so I have quite a bit more knitting to do. It is a hefty thing-- it will probably weigh three pounds when I am done with it. 

If you are able to zoom in on the couch picture (it is a sign of the times that I had to go back and un-capitalize "zoom"), you might be able to see a notebook page with a column of numbers and a graph. I was trying to figure out how the math works for stitch counts per square based on starting side length. Almost all of the squares in this blanket are mitered, so if I pick up 40 stitches on one side of the square, the first two rows will each be 79 stitches long (40 on the first side + 1 center stitch + 40 on the second side - 2 stitches consumed in the double decrease) and the next two will each be 77 stitches long.

I am mostly using up odds and ends of worsted- and Aran-weight yarn for this project, though I seem to be constitutionally incapable of getting through any project designed to use up leftovers without buying a little more yarn. The result of using odds and ends of yarn to knit up squares of varying size? A lot of yarn chicken. "Sure," I think to myself, "I can knit a 25-stitch square with this blob of yarn. Looks about right." And you know, sometimes I'm exactly right. But sometimes I'm biting my nails. WILL I MAKE IT? WILL I HAVE TO KNIT THE LAST ROWS OF THIS SQUARE IN A DIFFERENT COLOR? CAN YOU STAND THE SUSPENSE? 

Math to the rescue: it only took a few minutes of looking at the numbers to see that it was a quadratic function, and a few minutes more to figure out the details: if I cast on x stitches per side, the square will eventually contain 2x²-1 stitches. This way, see, I can knit up a quick 50 stitches and chuck them on the scale, and I can tell in advance whether I have enough yarn to finish the square I'm planning. 

...I am suddenly and self-consciously aware that this is a super SUPER niche post, and that the Venn diagram of "people who sketch out quadratic functions in their bullet journals" and "people who like to read knitting posts" might look like this:

So! Happy reading! If I were not in the middle of a May blogging streak this post would go straight into drafts, but here we are.

They're terribly comfortable

My husband has been asking me for a while to make a mask for him. I had gotten as far as googling "mask patterns" and whimpering faintly at the multiplicity of results, but today I bit the bobbin and whipped* one up.

*if in your idiolect "whipped" means "spent an uninterrupted 80 minutes completing while growing increasingly exasperated."

I read a blog post this afternoon from someone who has so far donated 300 masks. Three! hundred! masks! 

If you have also been googling "mask patterns" and whimpering faintly at the multiplicity of results, I can recommend this one. I used ordinary cotton broadcloth from my fabric stash. At my husband's request I also added a nose support. I made a small casing at the bridge of the nose. I took some fine wire from the craft shelf, and recruited a kid to get the electrical tape and make me a small bundle with the ends carefully secured.

A big chunk of the reason it took me 80 minutes is that I don't have a dedicated sewing space. Usually my sewing machine lives on the back steps. Have we talked about the back steps recently? Long ago our house had a separate apartment upstairs, and they used a separate staircase and entrance. These days I store yarn, sewing supplies, and wrong-sized kids' clothes on one side of the back steps, with the other side kept clear so we could use the stairs in an emergency. But it is not very convenient to collect the sewing machine, the iron, the pincushion, the shears, the thread, the elastic, and the fabric, bringing them up one staircase and down the other and clearing a spot for them in the dining room. If I am going to be making a bunch of masks, I would prefer to find a better system.

I have sometimes thought that when our nest gets a little emptier I might turn the smallest upstairs bedroom into a crafting space, but our nest is SO FULL right now, SO SO FULL.

We have robins nesting in a spot I can see from this seat and I am going to be grateful that I did not have to build this nest with a beak and no thumbs. We have considerably more square footage per resident than the robins do, and no rain falling on the occupants.

Wait, I just had an idea. MAYBE if I move a stack of notebooks out of the server in the dining room, then MAYBE my sewing machine could fit in that space temporarily. AND THEN it would be out of sight when I wasn't sewing masks, and convenient when I decided to sew. But the sewing machine might also be too tall.

I will report back. I am sure the suspense will be weighing on you.