Deep Space Knit

Yarn arts (knit and crochet) balled up with a heady dose of geekdom. Raise your pan-galactic-gargle-blaster and cheer!

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Location: Vermont, United States

Sunday, June 25, 2023

Oval Socks, or How I Swatched Until I Found a Sock Pattern I Wanted

 So once upon a time I found a stash of HiKoo DK (skacel) in the Herrschners' sale bin.  It was a nice, bouncy, sturdy merino/nylon yarn perfect for thicker socks.  And I enjoy using this yarn for socks!  I'm sad that it's no longer easily available to me.  It's a little splitty, but the stitch definition is excellent and they wear like a boss.  So yes, I would reccomend this yarn for experienced knitters who can navigate around some splitting issues.

I originally had five skeins of blue and made a pair of socks last year for Christmas gifting.  I also had three skeins of pink and three skeins of coffee.  And my rules for this yarn were to use it with patterns that highlighted the nice stitch definition.  Also, my family hates lace socks "because they are cold" so that make me focus on knit through the back loop and cable designs.  Or a combo of knit through the back loop with cables.

Originally I was going to use these two skeins for the pattern "Socke 1" which is a 8 stitch cable man's sock.  I was going to size it down to a woman's sock based on my gauge swatch.  And then I did the gause swatch and... well...

I knit a LOT looser than the designer.  So I'm on a good needle size for the yarn and coming up with a sock that would fit an elephant.  Noooope!  New sock pattern!

I went with Twisted Ovals, and then immediately changed the slip stitch + knit cable pattern into a no slip stitch K1TBL cable pattern.  Because that's what I wanted to knit.

Here's the first one, knit toe up, short row heel.  It uses the entire skein, just knit the ribbing until you run out of yarn.  I like how my modifications turned out!



Gideon's Court Sox, 10 months of Second Sock Syndrome

  I call these Gideon's Court Sox.

Why?

The socks are a present for Christy, who is my longtime Changeling friend, one of my best online friends for decades.  I love making socks for Christy, she is absolutely knitworthy.

Her character in the current Changeling game is Gideon, a Danaan Sidhe Knight.  A stately nobleman in the court of New Orleans.  His colors are black and silver.

I wanted to pick a sock that fit the character and would be appreciated by the player.  Something silver (I already had the perfect yarn!), something intricate and yet stately.

I picked Fledermaus by Cahoua Coffee.

I'm pretty adept at 1X1 cable crosses and KTBL.  I can cable without a cable needle and the way I knit (wrong) allows me to adjust the tension on the cables for a result I like.  So I thought "no probblem!"

HAH.

Ok, so this pattern DOES get a rest row on every even round.  

But this pattern IS NOT one I can memorize.  I am chained to the chart and the chart is focus intensive.

The sock contruction is straightforward - top down, heel flap and traditional gusset.  It's really the focus intensive chart that gets me every time.

I started these on September 24th 2022.  Finished the first sock for a HPKCHC quidditch match in November... and then immediately stuffed the yarn and the first sock in a project bag and left it sit there for months.

But 2023 is my year of erasing as many WIPs as possible.  So these socks are back on the needles.  Between work and family life is pretty stressful right now so these socks are NOT RELAXING.  But we're pushing through one row at a time.

They are, however, very, very pretty...


Looks like a noble sock, right?  Look at that lovely cable geometry!

Now - no diss on the pattern.  For as complicated as the chart is, the pattern is prefectly well written.  I'm not swearing at a poorly written pattern.  I'm swearing at my ability to read a very complicated chart.  Even with the nice little highlighter row thing that Knit Companion had, I still mis cross cables and have to go back and fix things.

I just turned the heel last night and I'm hoping that having only one side of cables and one side of flat will make this all go faster!


Ten Year Check In?

  What is this?

A blog post after ten - ok eleven - years?

Why yes.

I guess I'm feeling journalley lately.

Did I take an eleven year hiatus from knitting?  Oh hell no.  I have knit over 600 projects in the last decade, and each year I knit and crochet the equalivalent milage of the isle of Manhattan.

I just took a break from blogging about it.

But lately I've been feeling like Ravelry forum posts are passing things and it would be good to get my thoughts about yarn and my relationship to the craft back down on digital paper.

So here we go...

Friday, May 25, 2012

Summer of Socks

Back to blogging, back to socking.

I'm slowly working through my sock patterns and figured out that I have (ready for it??) over 500 sock patterns.

That's... a lot of socks.

Well, on the bright side I ~only~ have 90-some skeins of socks yarn.  Piece of cake, right?

I'm screwed.

Thursday, April 07, 2011

State of Pogona


GO OUT! MAKE YOURSELF ONE!

Seriously, this pattern is easy, fast and fun. It's just like having sex with yarn.

Wait. That didn't come out right.

But truly it's a good analogy. Fast, fun, satisfying and when you're done you wanna make more. I haven't even gotten this one blocked and I still wear it all the time (Darn you knitpicks, ship me mah blocking wires faaaaster!)



Ooooh, look at all those ruffles. Besides, when you have a red-red-redder-than-red red ninja coat, you really need a scarf that highlights it!

This scarf was made with 350 yards of lovely Sophie's Toes sock yarn in the colorway state fair.

It took 3 days to knit.

I lurrrves it!

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Thursday, March 31, 2011

My-my-my-my Pogona

Why am I still singing that song?

Yes friends, have cast on a new shawl. And decided in the casting on that I am enamored with Stephen West's designs. So clean. So purdy. So modern.

Anyways, in a leap of total frivolity I finished a sock and instead of casting on and finishing another sock like a good girl, I have cast on this lovely little shawl. Balled up the yarn and dove in head first. Tsk. tsk. tsk. My mother would be cross. I was a WIP yet to finish >.<

The yarn is Sophie's Toes, bought at the Madison Knit in - whooo! :D Color is not my usual bag, baby: State fair. Has a lot of jewel tones in it, but somehow the blend is appealing. The sum is greater than its parts.

Potato chip knitting at its best. Knit, purl, increase and YO. Ooooh. Is ok, the handpaint on the yarn is pretty wild.

The intention is that this shawl will match my purdy new coat. Yeah, splurged on a new coat because I had two options for spring: Heavy wool and denim. So bake or freeze. To be fair, the coat was found at a resale shop and I didn't pay much for it, so win! The new coat is bright freakin' red and since all my other coats are either A. olive green or B. black I decided that the red coat needed a lovely scarf to go with it.

So Pogona was pushed to the forefront of my knitting.

Loving this shawl so far.

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Saturday, October 09, 2010

Taj Mahal Shawl

The story of a knitter, a yarn of destiny and a project that sprang out of nowhere.

Every project has a story. Or at least that is what I’d like to think. Even when it doesn’t I am enough of a storyteller to just make something up, embellishing the little glimmers of thought that existed in my mind to craft a reason as to why I spent hours crafting something which the outside world will see as ‘just another hat’ or ‘just an other scarf’ or ‘why don’t you just buy them from Wal-Mart’ pair of socks.

Fortunately I don’t have to embellish much on this one. It has a story and a pretty decent one at that. Or at least one that tells of a knitters connection to yarn in a way she cannot describe and might give a clue to yarn shop owners on how to get someone to buy their wares even if they weren’t considering buying anything in the first place.

So lets start with the basics. This, technically isn’t my first shawl. But it is my first traditional shawl: lace, shaping, thin yarn, blocking, the whole nine. Some may call it a shawlette as it is, in fact, decently small. Fine by me. I don’t wear normal shawls and fully intend to wear this as a scarf with the point in the front and the end gracefully draped about my neck. It accommodates my insane desire to wear V-necks in the middle of Wisconsin winters.

It didn’t start with any intention to make this shawl. It started with a late-night yarn purchase one summer evening whilst I was trying to chase away the ‘help me, my crew and I work with idiots’ doldrums. That purchase netted me 2 self-striping rainbow sock maki from Play at Life fiberarts, in a delicious hand-dyed MCN. Once I had the maki in hand and was fondling their beautiful strands I wondered ‘what in the hell will I do with these?’ So I turned to my steadfastly awesome knitting bud Squidwidget and asked her. She agreed with my initial inclination that the maki were too lovely to be socks and trampled on, why not make them into a shawl?

Hm…a shawl? What an unusual idea. I’m not big on most shawls. But someone on Ravelry suggested that I might like the Westknits designs… and what do you know? I like Westknits designs. I particularly love the Akimbo pattern. And so I decided that the sock maki needed to become an Akimbo.

The problem? Akimbo uses a contrast color. I am missing that contrast color. I wanted the same yarn type: MCN and wanted a smoky tonal/kettle dyed blend of grey and black. I soon found that black sock yarn is difficult to come by.

This brings us up to the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool festival. Still looking for MCN, I surfed many booths with a lot of lovely yarn, coming back with very little. Finally, as my intrepid friend SquidWidget was spelunking through a sale bin of ??? yarn I wandered off and found an entire booth of sock yarn. Beautiful sock yarn. MCN sock yarn.

And no black.
Ok, there was close to black, but it registered as dark purple. Tonal, but not perfect. I left the booth, dejected back to see if SquidWidget was making it out alive. ??? hundred yards of yarn later we were back walking towards the Sun Valley Fiber booth and once again I was tempted by the yarns. The booth vendor started up a pleasant conversation, handed out Ravelry buttons and in general gave us a reason to stick around her booth a few more minutes. And that’s when I saw it.

“Ocean.”

It was not MCN. But it did catch my eye – and for one of the most foolish reasons. I wanted it because it reminded me of another yarn. It had that same misty, smoky colorway of Aruncania Atacama’s misty blue; sadly discontinued. A color style I rarely see. It reminded me of lazy days spent knitting in Vermont, and my first tentative steps through socks. I knit my Mom bedsocks with that blue, bedsocks that were eventually the unfortunate victims of my aunt’s vicious laundering. And this yarn said that I should buy it.

And I did.

Now what the heck was I going to do with a skein of beautiful fingering weight, non-superwash merino? I even set it on my computer desk, right by the screen so I had to look at it and remember it wanted to be knitted. I vowed not to be that type of knitter who goes to a fiber festival and goes wild… putting up half the stuff she bought for sale in destash a month later. I was going to knit this.

But into what?

“Make a shawl!” someone helpfully suggested. Alright, I wasn’t against shawls, but I didn’t have a pattern in mind, and Akimbo was out. So, time to Ravelry search. Fingering weight, yes. Knit, yes. Shawl, yes. Photo, yes. 400 yards, yes.

This produced some 60 pages of patterns to sift through. I ended up actually clicking on maybe 2 dozen, and with page after page tabbed on my screen, I was coming to the end of the list and saw this pattern.

Small enough to be worn as a scarf? Check. Solidly works with 400 yards? Check. Attractive, interesting lace pattern? Check. Not too frou-frou? Check. Triangle shape, pointy hem, cables and lace and kibbles and bits… Sold!

Literally. Purchased from Ravelry Saturday night and cast on Sunday morning while I was chilling out at my parent’s farm. The cast on took a bit of brain-work. Oh yeah… read ahead dummy. And then we were off and going. I like the charts in this pattern better than the written parts, and almost as a gift when I was halfway through an update of the pattern, fully charted came out – glee!

Now Taj Mahal has been cast off. Her final row is finished, and she lays in that lumpy mess that unblocked shawls take. She is beautiful. Cabled ripples like ocean waves undulate across her, with a yarn that reminds me of a quiet respite from crazy theatre days. I will block her this weekend and wear her with joy, and the prideful sense of accomplishment a knitter only gets from finishing a project crafted from impulse yarn. Oh ho! The non-knitters say. You bought that without even having a plan for it!

Ha ha! This knitter sasses back. I know what I like and I am solid in my beliefs that what I like is usable and beautiful yarn. See? I can find a project for the yarn I buy! And I can make something beautiful from it.

Now if I could only find tonal black MCN…

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Wednesday, October 06, 2010

As I sit here, editing another podcast and drinking tea I start to plan winter projects. gifts you ask. Nah. After over two dozen pair of gift socks methinks I shall be knitting for myself.

The question then becomes 'what do I knit?'

Do i knit something deliciously and tantalizingly difficult to show off my mad knitting prowess? Or do I knit something mind numbing but flattering and classic. Do I knit something I have had queued for ages or something I just pull out of my bum.

Have you ever wished you could knit more, faster? I am, at heart a process knitter. I enjoy making the stitches. I enjoy intricate and difficult patterns for the challenge of seeing them through, but I also enjoy the finished product and showing off that finished product on my body. I have so much yarn that is planned for attractive projects if I could only knit faster.

I know. I know. I knit fast enough already, but there are times when my decisive destashing urge (and finish-itis) kick in and say 'KNIT MORE NOW!'

Which is why I shall stop writing and go back to finishing my shawl. Taj Mahal shawl, bay-bee! I'm on row 135 of 140! You are looking at a woman who is nearing completion and is on the home stretch!

Go me!

Whatever will I knit next?

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Tuesday, September 28, 2010

And tonight marks the night Squidwidget and I try a podcast...

Be ascared. Be very ascared!



And part 2!