G. Knerd

I’ve been trucking along on my Knitting Olympics project, but it seems that the kitties really don’t want me to finish.  First, Monkey Kitty took apart a ball of yarn, then he chewed on the cable for my circular needle (luckily, not enough to break it), and now Bear Kitty is joining the fray – last night while I was brushing his teeth (I, er, may, in fact, be a crazy cat lady) Bear Kitty bit down on my thumb hard enough to break the nail and draw blood from multiple locations.  I’m fine (and I’m not going to horrify you with pictures), but one of the wounds is exactly where I rest my thumb against the needle tip, which…well, it doesn’t feel great.

I’m continuing to soldier on, but I don’t think my progress will be as great as it was before the injury.  I’m going to call this part of the “Fortius” part of the Olympic motto.

Remember when I cast on those socks with the Deborah Norville yarn?

Yeah, me either.  Apparently, it was in November.  Since then, that pair have been my go-everywhere, knit-anytime socks, which I finally finished last week.

This was my first time using Deborah Norville yarn, and…well, I’m not impressed.  The colors are okay, and it’s rather soft, but that’s about all I can say for it.  It’s really loosely spun, making it very splity.  I’m also pretty sure that this will be my first pair of hand knit socks to develop holes, given that the finished fabric feels about as durable as paper.

I could forgive all that, though – given that I got enough yarn for a pair of socks for five bucks, and given that my drawers really don’t need the addition of another pair of socks, I’d be willing to live with a pair that would wear out relatively quickly.  I could even practice my darning skills (or, you know, embrace the more traditional “Darn it!” while tossing them in the trash).

What I will not forgive, though, is this:

Between the two balls of yarn, there was not one, not two, but three places where the yarn was cut and then tied.  That’s six extra ends to weave in (even that I could forgive), but that also means that the color repeat was interrupted in random places and the socks don’t match (starting on the instep just after the heel).  Just look at the toes!

I’ve never subscribed to this idea of purposefully mismatched socks.  In my head, socks are a pair, and they are by definition (again, in my head) supposed to be identical.  I even scrapped quite a bit of perfectly good yarn just to ensure that I was starting at the same point in the color repeat on each sock.

Now, I’m willing to give Deborah another shot.  Given that her yarn was $5/pair at the store, I didn’t exactly stop at this colorway.  If I recall correctly, I actually have two other colorways of this yarn in my stash.  So here’s the deal, Deborah: eventually, I’ll get around to knitting socks out of those other colorways.  If either one of them shows the same behavior of random ends as this pair…well, I simply don’t have time for that kind of frustration in my life.  Sorry, my dear, but I don’t deserve that, and although your yarn is certainly the cheapest I’ve found so far, I’m also willing to spend a few extra bucks to avoid the random ends

Then again, maybe this pair were a fluke.  I’m willing to believe that.  But I’ll need the proof of both other pairs coming out just fine before I’m willing to bet any money on it.

On the other hand, I did get a full pair of socks for $5.  That’s really not a bad deal.

Four years ago, the Yarn Harlot declared the start of the Knitting Olympics – and I didn’t do it.  I could use any excuse I want about how I was in college, it was a weird time for me, I didn’t have the yarn for a good project, yadda, yadda, yadda.  The real reason I didn’t go for it was…er…well, if we’re going to be quite honest here (and when are we not?), I was just too lazy to put the effort into picking a pattern, and finding the yarn, and waiting to start until the right time, and so forth.  When I have the urge to start a project, very little can get in my way – even the Knitting Olympics.

This year, though, I’m in.  I’m doing it.  I’m signing up for the Knitting Olympics (in fact, just did, right here).  I’ve got the pattern (Anjou from French Girl Knits), the yarn (Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine in the 1275 colorway), and the needles.  The yarn is wound up.  I’ve swatched (although I’m living dangerously, because I’ve decided to skip blocking the swatch and fudge the numbers a bit between my inability to get gauge and the lack of a size that really fits me well).  I’m ready to go.

Or, I was ready.  Then Monkey Kitty got involved.

Now I like untangling knots more than most people (I’ve actually begged some of my friends to let me untangle skeins they got into a mess), but this was not what I wanted to wake up to this morning.  Luckily, only one of the three balls was really unwound (but boy was it ever!), and Monkey Kitty didn’t break the yarn in too many places.  Still, I’ll be spending a bit of time tonight turning this:

Back into this:

Because tomorrow, I get to cast on and go to town.  This will be interesting – the pattern doesn’t look too challenging technically, but it does have lace which has to be blocked (actually, the whole thing needs to be blocked), and I’ll need to plan accordingly for that one.  Also, there’s miles of stockinette down the body – that’s the endurance section.  And then there’s the seaming, which based on the description seems fiddly at best.

Really, I can’t wait.  Except I have to.

Damn rules.

Feel free to ignore this – just a heads up that I’m playing around a bit with the code on the site and the RSS feed.  Please let me know if you notice any issues.

Remember how Monkey Kitty has an extreme fondness for all things yarn and wool related?  Well, I wasn’t telling the whole story in the last post when I told you about how I’d thwarted his attempts to destroy the knitting.

See, I apparently didn’t learn my lesson about leaving hats hanging out around the house, and that night while we were sleeping, Monkey Kitty stole into our room, jumped up on the dresser, and stole another hat!  Since he was stealthy enough not to wake us, no one stopped him from actually damaging the hat, so what I woke up to that morning was this:

Now, really, that doesn’t seem so bad, actually…until you get up close with the damage, at which point this:

And this:

Plus a couple other loose ends convinced me that the hat was too far gone to be saved.  Luckily, this wasn’t a hand made hat and didn’t carry much sentimental value, so after a few minutes of cursing myself for leaving it out and Monkey Kitty for taking advantage of the situation, I moved on to thinking, “Well, what can I do with this now?”

And then I thought, “You know, I could take it apart and salvage the yarn for another project…”  (We’ll forget, for a minute, that the yarn for the hat is pure polyester and thus relatively unlikely to ever be knit by me.)

After a couple stitches had been unraveled, I got a clue that maybe this would be a messier process than I had signed up for:

It turns out that chenille sheds.  Massively sheds.  Especially when you’re pulling the length of it through the stitches to get to a point where you can just start unraveling.

After about a dozen stitches, something else occurred to me.  Something I’d read about on the Yarn Harlot’s blog just a few months ago.  Something about, er…unraveling ribbing?

Yep, that’s right – ribbing can only be unraveled in one direction (took me about 3 days to accept it, so if you haven’t had the revelation – or the failed experience – give it a minute to sink in).  Which meant that while one side of the hole I was making was perfectly fine for unraveling:

The other side was having, er, difficulties:

Sighing, I decided to deal with that problem later, and soldiered on working the hole bigger until it reached all the way around the hat:

And after that, it was pure, unraveling goodness.  Am I the only one who gets a perverse pleasure out of frogging knitting?  Especially store-bought knitting – there’s something so powerful in the idea that you can take this thing and reduce it down to component parts which you can then use to make something else.

Or maybe that’s just me.  That’s cool, I’m used to being…special.

When everything was said and done (and after doing the same hole making/enlarging process on the other side of the non-ravelable half), I ended up with a huge pile of unusable “stuff” and a few balls of yarn:

Anyone want some polyester chenille yarn?  I think I’ve gotten all the pleasure I need out of it.

Here’s another episode in the Saga of Monkey Kitty and the Knitting.  It probably says something that I reached for the camera before saving the hat.  The same behavior (and the laughing) probably also taught him that his behavior was okay.  Whoops.

It started with him stealing one of my skiing hats out of the office while the Blanket Thief wasn’t looking and running downstairs with it.  Unfortunately for him (and luckily for the hat), I was sitting downstairs and saw him as soon as his feet hit the first level.

At first, he seemed to be a bit nervous about having an audience:

Then he went back to sniffing the hat:

And then he disguised some chewing as snuggling with the hat.  Don’t be fooled, though – he had some yarn between his teeth for this shot.

But then, the stress of having an audience seemed to get the better of him, and he collapsed under the weight of the camera.

Quickly thereafter, the hat was taken back to its rightful place in the hat box in the closet, out of reach of adventurous kitties.  Despite a couple slightly-more-frayed bits of yarn, there’s no real damage…at least, not to this hat…

I think I may have mentioned before that Monkey Kitty is a bit…er…obsessed with yarn and all things made with it.  He’s been known to steal balls of yarn, socks, and even an occasional full sweater (although he usually doesn’t get very far with those).  This week has been a pretty good one for catching him in the act – such as the following exchange, caught on camera.

Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to catch him in the act every time…more on that next time.

I have a confession to make – I’ve only ever done one kind of sock heel.  Ever.  For my first sock, I found a book, picked a heel, and never looked back.  Dozens of socks later, I’m still doing the same thing.  I’ve even been known to scoff at other kinds of heels – I’ve never tried them, but since I don’t like the look of them, I don’t see a point in doing so.  (Note, I’m open to suggestion and reasoning as to why other heels might be better, I’ve just never found enough reason in my experience to change things.)

So where did I find this awesome sock heel?  It was in the Complete Guide to Modern Knitting and Crocheting by Alice Carroll, published in 1949.  (Amazon doesn’t seem to have any copies, although they do have some second-hand copies of another book she wrote.) There’s a section on sock construction, and she examines three different heel types: French, German, and Auto.  The French and German heels are both flap heels, but the Auto heel is similar to what knitters call a short-row heel.

The biggest difference between the modern short-row heel and an Auto heel is that the latter generates extra stitches which are decreased with a gusset, whereas a short-row heel doesn’t have a gusset.  That’s probably one of the biggest downsides of short-row heels, because human feet fit better when there’s a bit of extra room at the top of the instep.

Anyway, all of that was introduction to say that, since the modern world seems to have lost the Auto heel from the Complete Guide to Modern Knitting and Crocheting, I’m going to bring it back.  Hopefully I’ll manage to convert one or two of you to the way of the Auto heel – or maybe you’ll be able to convert me away from it, and it will fade quietly into obscurity.

Alice’s instructions on this heel comprise a few paragraphs:

This is a less popular method of turning a heel of a sock or stocking.  The heel itself is shallower than in either the French or Dutch methods, but the shaping makes a nicely rounded heel.

Arrange the sts. as for the Dutch and French heels, half the sts. for the heel and half for the instep.  The wool should come at right-hand end of heel sts.  All first sts. are slipped.  P the heel sts.  Now work in stockinette st., knitting 1 st. less in every row, until 9 sts. [G.Knerd note: in practice I use one-third of the heel stitches as my stopping point] are left unknitted on each side of small knitted group in center.  The last row should be a P row.  Turn, and K back along center sts. just purled.  Pick up strand between last st. just knitted and first unknitted st.  Place it on left-hand needle, and K this loop with first unknitted st.  Turn, and repeat this process on P row, purling the loop and the unknitted st. at end of row.

Continue in this manner until all sts. are knitted again.

If that made enough sense to you that you’re ready to go off and do your own Auto heel, great.  You probably don’t need to read the rest of this post.  Personally, it took me a while to parse out what she meant, and I’d like to save you that step by walking you through each stage and providing some pictures.

Caveat: to be fair, I don’t exactly follow Alice’s directions either – there are a couple places we disagree as to whether you stop on a knit or a purl row, as well as how many stitches you should be using.  You can either follow her directions, or you can follow my modified directions, but you probably shouldn’t mix them together or you might not end up where you think you should be.

For my demonstration, I took some kitchen cotton and cast on 48 stitches, then knit 10 rows of k1tbl p1 ribbing (because I think it looks cool, and I needed a bit of a cuff to make the heel look right).   You can cast on however many stitches and do whatever kind of cuff you like – when you’re ready to do the heel, just separate half the stitches for the heel and leave the other half either on other needles or on waste yarn.

The first step is to knit all the way across your heel stitches (in this case, 24 sts):

Turn the sock, slip the first stitch with yarn in front as if to purl.  You’ll do this for every purl row on the heel:

Purl until the second-to-last stitch (in this example, this row was s1 purl-wise, k22).  On every row, you’ll knit or purl one less “center” stitch than you did the row before):

Turn the sock, and slip the first stitch with yarn in back as if to knit.  You’ll do this for every knit row of the heel:

Again, you’ll knit to the second-to-last stitch (for that row, slip 1, knit 21) and turn.  You’ll continue the pattern of purling a row and knitting a row, subtracting a stitch from the center on each row, until you have a third of the stitches left in the center (and, thus, a third on either side as slipped stitches as well).  For example, the next few rows on the example would be:

S1 as if to purl, p20, turn.

S1 as if to knit, k19, turn.

S1 as if to purl, p18, turn.

S1 as if to knit, k17, turn.

And so on, until you reach the point that the center stitches equals one-third of the heel stitches.  In the example, I stopped when I had 8 stitches (including the slip 1) in the center.  You want to finish this part of the heel on a knit row (in the example, it was s1 as if to knit, k7).  At this point, you should have a pretty triangular shape (shown here on the purl side):

You’ll continue slipping the first stitch of every row as before.  Turn so the purl side is facing you, slip 1, and purl across the center stitches – all the way to the last center stitch.  At this point, you’ll have something that looks something like this:

You’ll want to pick up and purl this loop:

Here it is picked up:

And after purling that loop, also purl the first slipped stitch off the left needle.  At this point, you have 1 more stitch in the heel then you started with, and you’ve added 2 stitches to the “center” stitches.  Turn the heel, slip the first stitch, and knit across the center stitches to the end of the center stitches:

You’ll be picking up two loops here, then knitting them together.  This is the first loop:

And the second:

Note: for both loops, you come in from the back when you’re on the knit side of the heel – it’s kind of a scooping motion from the back to pick them up.  When you have both of them on the needle, it should look something like this:

The two picked up loops should be knit together through the back loop – insert the right needle through both as if to purl (but with yarn in back), wrap the yarn and pull through the stitch:

After that, you’ll again knit the first slipped stitch off the left needle, again adding 1 stitch to your overall heel stitch count and 2 stitches to the “center” stitches.  Turn, and purl to the end of the center stitches.  At this point (and for all heel rows going forward) you’ll pick up 2 loops instead of 1.  (Technically, you can do whatever you want, but I find it makes a cleaner join if you pick up the two instead of just one and then knit or purl them together.)  Here’s what it would look like on the purl side before picking up anything, with the first loop pointed out:

And this is after the first loop has been picked up, with the second loop pointed out:

Both loops picked up:

You’ll purl these two loops together, and again purl the first slipped stitch off the left needle:

Those pickups are the hardest part of this heel, so I’ll run through them again on another row.  On the knit side before picking up any loops, with the first loop pointed out:

After picking up the first loop, with the second loop pointed out:

With both loops on the needle:

Knitting both loops together through the back loop:

Again, you’d also knit the first slipped stitch off the left needle, turn, and purl all the way across the center stitches.  On the purl side, before picking up any loops:

Picking up the first loop:

Picking up the second loop:

Purling both loops together:

And, once more, don’t forget to purl the first slipped stitch on the left needle.  It may seem that I’m beating a dead horse reminding you of it, but there’s been more than one time that I’ve been working a heel and ended up in a bad place because I forgot one of the slipped stitches.  There’s nothing worse than getting all the way through a heel before realizing that you made a mistake on the third row after the turn and you have to unravel the whole thing.  (Okay, actually, there’s plenty worse, as recent world events will hopefully remind you.  I’m lucky enough that this particular revelation would be one of the worst things to happen to me in any given day.)

Continue back and forth in this manner, picking up two loops to create a new stitch at the side of the center stitches on each row, until you run out of heel stitches.  If you’ve done things right, you should finish on a knit row – the last stitch would be the last slipped knit stitch, and you should have no other slipped stitches on the other side of the heel.  You should have almost double your original heel stitches on the heel needle(s) – technically, it should be one and two-thirds times your original stitches, but I never count.  You’ll know if it looks like a heel:

At this point, the only thing left is to remember to do a gusset as you do the top of the instep.  For the first row, you’ll knit across the instep (non-heel) stitches (in pattern if you’re doing something patterned), then knit all the heel stitches as well.  From this point forward, you’ll always be knitting around the entire sock (unless you’re doing a special toe or you have a really weird pattern for your sock that somehow makes you go back and forth in the instep).  When you get to the heel on the next round, ssk the first two stitches of the heel, knit across to the last 2 stitches of the heel, and k2tog.  Repeat that row every time you knit the heel stitches until you’ve decreased to the original heel stitch count, then just knit the heel stitches without the decreases.  Your gusset will look something like this (the triangle in the ankle area of the “sock”):

And that’s it!  I’ve found it very easy to substitute this heel for any sock pattern I’ve tried, so feel free to try it on your own favorite pattern.  Let me know how it goes!

This weekend, the Blanket Thief and I were invited to a baby shower (well, technically, we were invited several weeks ago, but the actual event happened this weekend).  And last week, I saw some Magic Slippers that my friend Hot Pink Mama had created, and…well…I have plenty of leftover sock yarn by this point.  Most of it I’m keeping to eventually make a Blankie, but there’s a few skeins that are wool or bamboo or corn based which wouldn’t fit in well with the other wool-based yarns, so Magic Slippers seemed like a great idea.

I pulled out a leftover skein of something – I think it might be Maizy, if my memory isn’t failing me, but I have no idea whether that’s a company or a particular line of yarn or what.  The ball band is long gone, so the color is also past knowing.  Really, the only thing I really remember about this one is that it’s got corn in it.  And it makes really thick, squishy socks.

Given that we didn’t know what gender the baby-to-be will be, mottled purple seemed like a nice, neutral choice.  I read the instructions for the slippers at SockPixie’s blog, turned on some TV, and went to work.

The sole took about an hour – SockPixie says that she can normally whip up a pair in that time, but I think I lost time between using a smaller needle size, slightly sticky yarn, and reverse engineering the pattern (because, er, I didn’t want to go back and look at the actual instructions…).  I bet if I were using larger needles and/or wool-based yarn, I’d come much closer to the pair per hour rate that she’s churning them out…although even then, I doubt I’d really match her speed.  (Reminds self that it’s not a race, really.)

For a bit of perspective, here’s the sole against my fingers.  Keep in mind that I actually have really small hands and the needles are size 0 (2.0mm).

Again, at this point, I didn’t want to check the directions, so while I knew I had to pick up stitches I didn’t remember how many.  I’d slipped the first stitch of every row, giving it a neat selvage edge, so I figured I’d just pick up a stitch per every slipped stitch.  Ultimately, I think I ended up with about 65 or so stitches – and since I was supposed to end up with 62, that sounds pretty good to me.

I loved the way the circular needle wrapped around the sole after the stitches were picked up – it reminded me of a trilobite.

This is where my booties stop looking like the original, however.  SockPixie’s version is knit in garter stitch, I decided to go with stockinette so the cuff would roll over a bit at the top.  I also did different sets of decreases (although that might not actually be noticeable, now that I think about it).

At this point in writing the post, Monkey Kitty walked over the keyboard and managed to make my cursor completely disappear.  Oh, the joys of having cats…although, as you’ll see later, there’s an argument that I deserved it…

Anyway, the top of the booty was much quicker than the sole, and before I knew it, I had a booty!  (Does anyone else think the singular of “booties” is weird looking?  Or, at least, odd in the context of babies?  Although, I suppose, it’s all a cycle – booty calls lead to babies lead to booties…er…anyway…) Here, look at the booty!

Almost instantaneously, the second booty also appeared – it really was like magic!  There was a pair!  And they were sooo cute!  Looking at them, I thought that maybe, just maybe, it would be a good idea to start making babies of my own – you know, so I could have my own sets of adorable little baby booties like this:

At that point, the Blanket Thief declared that we would have to get those booties out of my sight now, and that I wasn’t allowed to make any more of them.  He considers them the Baby Booties of Doom™, and worries about the effects of me knitting more.

I might still make a few sets in secret, though.  They’re just too cute.  Seriously.

As to why Monkey Kitty might be mad enough to make my cursor disappear…well…right now, he’s my substitute baby, so I forced him to try them on.

Turns out, kitties don’t like wearing booties.  They also don’t fit very well.  Who knew?

(Don’t worry, the booties were thoroughly washed before being given to the mommy-to-be.  And, although annoyed and embarrassed, no cats were harmed in the making and photographing of the booties.)

For those of you who don’t speak Danish/Norwegian, “Mormor” directly translates to “mother’s mother”, but is more likely translated to “Grandma”.  Since my Mormor lives in Denmark, and we already called my dad’s mom “Grandma”, it made sense not to translate that and stick with “Mormor” for her.

Plus, it was really fun to confuse the kids at school with a word they didn’t know.

Being the wonderful Mormor that she is, every year she sends me a package of presents, often containing a hand-knit item.  This year, the hand knit item looked like this:

Which seemed pretty innocuous, until I read the tag…

For those of you who might have trouble reading it, the tag says: “Dishcloths.  Please say thanks to Kat – she bought the yarn I just knit it.  Mormor” (Kat is my stepmom, and a lovely lady in her own right.)

As much as I adore Kat (and need to get her a nickname for the blog, because she’s sure to show up here again…), I just can’t fathom the humility it would take to claim that I didn’t need to be thanked for knitting something, that the person who bought the yarn deserved thanks more than me.  Maybe if I was knitting with yarn spun from actual princess hair and did something ridiculously simple, but even then…I’d deserve some credit, right?

Of course, the dishcloths themselves are lovely as well, and I’m torn by the idea of using them – I know that they’re intended to wash up messes, but the idea of purposefully getting these hand-knit beauties dirty?

Sacrilege, I tell you.  Simply sacrilege.