KnitMe

Things

Well, J is my friend. These socks fit GREAT.

I still seem to have a bit of trial-and-error with 'E' but once I get that right, the magic number seems to be J. This time, I added about 3/4ths of an inch worth of J stitches on the last row - I was getting 8 stitches per inch with this yarn so I added 3 'J' stitches to each 'wing' at the point in the master pattern where she tells you to add your J stitches. And it made all the difference. I have a nice snug foot AND a sock that goes on.

I knitted up the leg as far as I reasonably thought I could given the circumference, then I went up a needle size and knitted 2 inches of ribbing and bound off with a lace bindoff, and it's all perfect. I actually think these socks won't fall down, although I have thought that before and been wrong.

Factoids: I used most of two hanks of 'Casapa' from Yarn4Socks, in the color "Cyclamen" - I used size 1 needles although I think this yarn would have been fine on size 2. I worked on them (Ravelry says) from August 19th to September 14th. I used the Ridgeline master pattern from the New Pathways book, and up the front I put a panel of 'gull wing' lace which can be found in Barbara Walker.

Now that I have made a bunch of socks from this book, I am better equpped to say which architectures are my favorites, a question someone asked here some time ago. The ones I will probably go back to over and over are 'Sky' for top-down, and 'Ridgeline' for toe-up, because I can most easily envision the possibilities for ornamenting those architectures.

However, now that I have embraced the secret of 'J', I am finally trying Coriolis.

The yarn is 'Somoko' from Fleece Artist in the color "Amethyst", and I have to say I LOVE this yarn. The color is fabulous. The blend is a bit like Bearfoot - wool, nylon, and mohair, and with the addition of a little silk. The yarn label says to knit to 7 spi but after starting off on size 2 needles I decided 8 spi is better and I started over on size 1.

After spinning all that brown suri/merino and all that blue stuff, I wanted to spin something soft and lovely, so I fished out a two-ounce ball of roving I got a while ago at Maryland Sheep and Wool from Jean Womack at Wild Meadow Angoras.

I want a scarf, I hope I got enough yardage - it is about 150 meters/165 yards and 2 ounces. I should be able to knit lace with it on size 7 needles, and get something useful. Her blends are so beautifully done, and the colors are delicious.

I'm not making very rapid progress on my other projects. This is the boring stockinette back of the Taconic pullover, a WEBS pattern, and the yarn is Laines du Nord Cashsilk bought at WEBS last winter. The yarn is luscious to knit so I'm just zoning out while I knit the back of the sweater - I wanted to see if the yarn would be a good match and check my gauge before plunging into the much more interesting front.

I'm also working on the felted vest from Felted Knits by Ber Galeskas. It seemed to me that a felted equivalent of a down vest would be a really useful garment, and I certainly have tons of plain wool in stash that would be perfect for it.

The yarn is Knitpicks Wool of the Andes in the color 'Spruce'. It is going to be a pretty nice item if I ever finish it - I discover that I need to knit on temporary front, neck, and armhole bands out of worsted weight cotton so that the edges will not felt beyond a certain size. I am not sure I have enough worsted weight cotton in the house to do that, so I might have to scare up a ball of something somewhere as a substitute. Then there will be the matter of a separating zipper, which is a much more difficult item to track down in the right size and color than it was 20 years ago.

Except for the socks, I am bored with my knitting. I need to get through all this stockinette and start something more complicated! Luckily cooler weather is here, and having a lap full of wool will seem like a good idea again.

Technical Matters

I finished three new skeins last week, all silk and silk blends from The Silkworker. Here they are drying. I like chaining through the yarn as I skein it onto the yarn wrap. This helps to avoid tangles later when winding the yarn into a ball. Flashdance (Navajo plied silk top in crayon colors) is chained into 50 yd. bouts; Tuscan Star (2-ply blue silk/cashmere) is divided into 100 yd bouts; and Charisma (2-ply purple silk top) is chained into 100 yd bouts.

Charisma is winging its way to a friend as a gift. Flashdance is warped on the inkle loom ready to weave into colorful bookmarks.

That left Tuscan Star. I barely plied it in this first run, just enough to tension the two strands together while maintaining its cushy loft. Now it needed another run through the wheel to gently tighten the ply. In one of those light-bulb life-changing moments I realized that my beloved antique saxony could do that job beautifully. I had waited so long to be ready. This was the task...now it was time.

I bought my wheel as a ‘wheel and a box of sticks’ near Ann Arbor, Michigan in the late ‘60’s. I cleaned her with turpentine, conditioned her with warm boiled linseed oil, steel wooled her metal parts, and replaced her worn leather bearings with ones cut from old driving reins. I spun on her for 10 years...she was like an extension of my hand and thoughts. Then life changed. She went through a flood, followed by 30 years in storage, a bad repair, more storage, another flood, and finally a professional repair to her whorl to realign it with the bent axle, and to rebuild her broken treadle bar. After two years of waiting in the open air in my house to reabsorb moisture into the fragile ash-dry wood, I spun on her yesterday for the first time since 1975.

I love this wheel, and everything about her.
Her elegant simplicity, the grace of her maidens:

The depth of her oak table, the strength of her tension screw:

She has lived a long life and worked hard. It shows In the red paint embedded in the grain of her wheel rim, and the little charred place near one of her spokes:

It shows in the numbers stamped into each of her posts and holes, to help put her back together after a long journey, perhaps with a family of settlers traveling west to a new home and new opportunities:

It shows in her treadle, worn by use into a perfect footprint:

She has fire and passion, like a spirited horse eager to grab the bit and go.

She reminds me of Trixie, my little sorrel mare, who would lighten her step and toss a glance back over her shoulder, as if to say "Come on Mom, are you ready for a good run?"

Yesterday was a good run. This little wheel was born to make yarn with alarming speed.

Her wheel to flyer ratio is 13:1; her bobbin take-up is awesome. She spins with barely a touch on the treadle. She is a joy.

My wheel has come home.
My heart is singing.