Category: craft

Susan: Alas, poor Sock! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite style, of most excellent pattern: I hath held him in my hand a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it. Here hung that work that I have knitted I know not how oft. Where be your cuff now? your heel-turn? your toe? your twisting of stitches, that were wont to set the table admiring? Not one now, to praise your own design? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.

Horatio: What’s that, my lord?

Susan: How on earth did I manage to lose the sample sock for my new design somewhere on a train between Glasgow and London? And, more to the point, why hadn’t I taken the proper gauge measurements and written them down yet?

[Exeunt stage left, weeping and wailing.]

As there is no body, a memorial service will be held at 8pm on Thursday, 14 June 2012. No flowers, please.

I’ve got heels and toes on my mind a lot at the moment.  I’ve just turned the heel on the new design that I mentioned a couple of posts ago and I’m contemplating starting another pair of my Irish Stout socks.

In the pattern, I recommend using some sort of reinforcing thread for the heels and toes if you’re not using a sock yarn with nylon in. For the sample pair, I used ordinary cotton sewing thread since I couldn’t find anything else that I was confident wouldn’t show against the black yarn. Imagine my delight when I ordered some Lang Jawoll yarn to make another pair and discovered that it comes with its own matching reinforcement thread. (Yes, I know I need to get out more.)

By the way, if you’ve having trouble finding the reinforcement thread, it is tucked right in the very middle of the yarn but it is possible to ease it out without destroying the whole ball — if I can manage it, anyone can! To use the reinforcing thread, just hold it together with your yarn as you knit. You do need to make sure that you’re picking up both the yarn and the thread as you knit into the loops but that’s the most complicated thing about it.

The reason I’m still contemplating starting the socks and haven’t actually started is that I’m trying to decide whether I want to make a top-down version rather than the toe-up version of the original pattern. Another toe-up pair would be pretty mindless knitting but a top-down pair would mean that I could publish an alternative version of the pattern for those knitters who don’t want to knit toe-up socks. It would mean more thinking about heels and toes though!

For readers not familiar with Scottish country dancing, the post title is a reference to the dance, The Military Two Step, which is a lot more fun when performed as an adult at an actual ceilidh than when you’re forced to dance it in your school gym hall. Here’s a video by the Scottish Fiddle Orchestra showing how it’s done.

I knitted this delightful little set shortly before Christmas for a friend’s newborn baby boy in RYC Cashsoft 4 ply.

The jumper is the Simply Stripy Sweater for Baby by Rae Blackledge. The pattern comes with a huge range of variations, including alternative sleeves, and bodysuit and dress versions. The pattern is well designed and written (although, at 20 pages long, it’s clearly not designed for printing out in full). I particularly love the button placket to make it easy to get over baby’s head. The socks are just basic toe-up socks knitted to what I hoped would be a sensible size.

And, since nothing is ever simple around here, here is my first attempt at knitting that jumper in Rowan Pure Wool 4 ply.

At first glance, it looks fine but look a little closer and you might be able to see that the red dye ran really badly into the white when it was washed and then I managed to attach one of the snaps back to front. I want to try and see if I can remove and replace the snap so I’m holding on to this one for the time being with a large note saying “Handwash cold by itself!”