Since I knit, I’ve got a lot of things I made and working out what’s worth keeping from that group has a whole extra set of questions. I have a sweater that I made well and that I quite like, but it’s not perfect and the arms are too tight — am I just wearing it out of obligation? I have another with drapey bell sleeves that get in my lunch. It’s perfect if I’m just reading or typing or walking through a cold field of flowers (provided said flowers don’t have any kind of burr, seed, dandelion puff or grabby branches), but sometimes I have to do the washing up. I like it but I don’t love it: I suspect I only keep it because I made it and I can’t imagine anybody else loving it the way I think it should be loved. Should I unravel and rework them? Is it worth it? Oy.

First-world problems, yo. When you’re daily pissed off by all the rummaging it takes to find something for work, it’s time for a cull. Starting with socks: lots of handknit socks, retained out of sentimental attachment. Knitter’s landmarks. Then I realised I was moping about socks and had to pull my head out of my arse. Firstly, they’re great, but they’re hardly sex-and-candy awesome. Secondly, all that sock yarn in the stash? Getting antsy in there. Thirdly, these socks? They actually sucked.

The fallen: watermelon socks

Background: bought the hand-dyed yarn on eBay, complete bargain. These socks were awesome: watermelon stripes with little black pips! Loved it. Totally made up for the way they sagged, stretched, and generally lacked all the properties of wool that socks need. And then, hoo boy! They faded, and how.

For the purposes of comparison:

Pale and wan

Yep. That yarn is the same ball from which these pale babies sprang. Not cool.

And then there’s these:

The first fallen

Aw, cute little beaded hearts! I was experimenting with making socks flat. God knows why: knitting on DPNs is as easy as complaining about taxes. You might have thought I’d catch on to the fact that people have been making socks that way for a bajillion years: that maybe, just maybe, other options have actually been explored and rejected for some reason — like, oh, I don’t know, that having a whacking great seam on the middle of your sole is totally uncomfortable and stupid. Plus, 100% cotton is not a good sock yarn. Double plus: they wore through at the heel damn quick.

Finally: oooh, this one hurt. Stung, even. Alert readers may recognise my Skew socks. Then again, maybe you won’t, because THEY FELTED. ARGH.

Serious heartbreak here

Oh, Araucania Ranco Multi, why did you say “gentle machine wash” if you didn’t mean it? Didn’t you know I would take you at your word? There is no saving these babies. At least, being 100% wool, I can theoretically compost them. No nobler burial. RIP.

The sock drawer — and its compatriots — open and close easily now, and despite my misgivings, a swag of clothes will be making their way to the second-hand store. Feels good to have less.



Photographing-feet-asana

…which is pleasantly relaxing to boot.  This one below gives a better indication of colours, but not of fit — makes ‘em look all baggy.  These babies actually fit like a dream.

Skewed skews

At first, I thought they were going to be too long and bunch around the toes, but the pattern produces quite a narrow-fitting sock, so once I was up and walking around in them and not just laying around with my knees bent at weird angles trying to photograph them, they stretched in the right places and became perfectly-fitted socks.

Under Mozart's watchful gaze

Details:

Pattern: Skew by Lana Holden, who may, from the evidence I’ve gathered, be a complete genius.
Yarn: Araucania Ranco Multi, 1 skein; colourway: not sure, but if it makes you think of autumn leaves after rain, you’re probably close.
Opinion on them: Absolutely wonderful. Really loved these: can’t wait to dig my self-patterning yarns out of storage and see what the pattern makes of them. Meanwhile, I’ve got a few other projects on the Big Pre-Move Challenge (knitting) list to get through.

Skew — One down, one to go: still looking awesome, still blowing my mind.  Still in a plastic bag stuffed down one side of the knitting basket/end-of-day-jumper-receptacle in my room.  These socks rock and I genuinely want the finished product on my feet, ASAP, but — well, there’s no but. I got distracted, put them to one side and haven’t finished.  No excuses: let’s get ‘em done.

Mossy tendrils — slow and steady progress, which is deeply uninteresting in terms of blog posts.  There’s only so many photos of dark green stockinette waist shaping I can justify.  I’m out of the shaping woods now, and have just a little plain stockinette, followed by the garter hem, to go on the body, and then it’s sleeve city. I love top-down raglans.  I am a happy citizen of Topdown Ragland!  The best part is, this is a good nibble project: stitch away while you’re waiting for dinner, squeeze in a couple of rounds while you’re chatting or watching TV — being mostly stockinette and garter, I can even work on it while I’m reading one of the many books on The Other List: so efficient! This is the only project on this list that could not have the word “languishing” used in its discussion — I haven’t rushed it, but I haven’t dawdled, either. Just whittled away, knit by knit.

Silver sands — scarf nearly done, thanks to a day of anxious waiting at the hospital a couple of weeks ago.  Unfortunately, and without having foreseen this self-imposed deadline thing, I promised the recipient of Silver Sands a matching pair of wrist warmers.  Seemed like a good idea at the time: now it feels like another thing on the Finish It Before The Move list.  Which it totally is, so at least it’s honest.  Cast on the cuffs last night, and had about three false starts before I finally got going on a size and structure I really like.  Now to persuade myself that I can “roar” through them and get the mitts done to match the scarf in short order; I’ve already started asking myself how long I think it takes to make a pair of wrist warmers, and the level of optimism implicit in my answers varies according to mood and weather.  Just after I’ve had coffee, I’ll say it’ll only take me a weekend, max, to do them; ask me again mid-afternoon and I’ll say it takes weeks and I was a fool, A FOOL, to have even started them. (I am decidedly less rosy and more sleepy mid-afternoon.) The scarf hasn’t been bound off yet, because I suspect I’ll have a bit of leftover yarn when I’ve finished the mitts and I will use that up as the last bit of the scarf.

See, when I decided to set out this list, I was all bouncy and thinking “Hey, this deadline stuff is great: what a good motivator for getting through all those UFOs!” but now I’m getting a bit uneasy about how much I may have signed myself up for here.

Mermaid gloves — sweet cheeses, I had forgotten about these. I cast these on in summer, determined to have them finished before the cold weather came.  One’s done, the other is lingering: I’m not even sure where I’m up to in the chart.  Actually, that’s probably what has triggered the lingering.  The figuring.  The figuring was the lingering triggering! I’ve put these down at one point, forgotten where I was up to, and decided the slight increase in mental challenge created by having to work it out is sufficient justification to put them aside.

I think that’s what appeals to me so much about this kind of deadline thing: a lot of these unfinished projects are unfinished because there was something that distracted me.  Nearly all of them have been paused, usually out of a slight increase in challenge, just long enough for a new project to elbow its way into my life. Silver sands was paused because I had to find/create a wrist warmer pattern; Skew and the Mermaid loves were paused because I had forgotten where I was up to in their patterns. Now that I’m forcing myself to finish things up and not permitting new projects into the arena (KNITTING PATTERN LOCKDOWN!), I’m realising that the challenges that present potential sticking points are very rarely worth sticking on.  That’s a bit embarrassing.  Huh.  I’m actually just easily put off.  Look, I didn’t sign up to this challenge to learn stuff about myself, okay? Certainly not embarrassing stuff.  Geez, get off my back!

On the other hand, maybe it’s not just me. This pattern does something to you…I took this photo shortly after completely the insanely clever and zesty origami movement that you use to make the heel (there’s mid-row grafting). I thought I could show you what had happened and be all encouraging and stuff. Role model that shit all over this here blog. Nup. No clue. (I kinda like the picture, though.)

I’m still not entirely sure how I did it, but it works beautifully. I just followed the pattern really carefully, didn’t ask questions, didn’t try to understand what was going on — just followed ‘structions.  Here’s the heel, while I’m wearing the sock, and I still haven’t completely figured out what happened.

One minute I was working a kind of bias tube…

…then something happened and I had a heel…

…then a few more somethings happened and I had a sock.

That is some zesty knitting right there: I’m charging on with the second one, and I have to admit I love them to bits.  The fit is great, they’re really comfy — and I feel a bit like a genius for having finished one successfully. I imagine that when I finish the second, a deep and abiding sense of self-assurance and calm will settle over me. This will make me intolerably smug and nobody will want to be around me, but at least I’ll have awesome, awesome socks to keep me happy.

I cast on Skew within days of it coming out: it hit me right at an auspicious time, when I badly wanted something challenging (but not too challenging) and had just discovered and lovingly balled some sock yarn that I had forgotten I bought.  I cast on Intolerable Cruelty 1 on the same day, and found myself so hypnotised that I had to knit it twice, and then I got sick and that reset all my knitting to Recovery Knitting (we’re still working through the Everlasting Bagstopper addiction: growth is a process). So Skew kinda got knuckled out of the way. I fished it out of the WIPs bag from time to time, but I had forgotten where I was up to in the pattern and couldn’t be bothered figuring it out, and — well, we’ve all been there.  So yesterday, when I had cast off another Everlasting Bagstopper (shut up), I was fishing around for something else to knit. Wasn’t in the mood to decide upon a new project, so I didn’t feel like casting on. Didn’t want to play scarf anymore with Silver Sands, so I fished out Skew. As with everything that I put off indefinitely out of a fear of labour, the process of actually finding where I was up to in the pattern took me, oh, about nought-point-two seconds.  The pattern is tremendously clear and straightforward and I had completely forgotten that all I had to do was follow the instructions. I am enraptured with it.

I had avoided it because I thought my brain wasn’t quite up to doing anything beyond soothing and simple garter stitch (and Everlasting Bagstoppers, obviously), and that I would keep losing track of the increases and decreases and twists and turns — frankly, I was a bit scared that the excitement that this pattern presents me with would be a bit much. (I’m doing really well, but I’m still definitely in the Recovery Zone, health-wise.) Turns out, all I have to do is trust the pattern. Trust the extremely clever, thrilling pattern. Seriously, I can’t get enough of this baby.  Loving it to bits.  If you haven’t had a whack at this pattern, I strongly suggest you do so: it will do some zesty things to your understanding of what a sock does and is.

And I have to admit, this yarn is making the whole thing even easier.  It is easily one of the most beautiful sock yarn colourwayss I’ve worked with: it makes me think of rain and being in the park in autumn; the soil and the leaves and the blue sky and things like that.  And, since it’s become a little autumnal around here lately, it all feels very harmonious and in sync with the seasons, etc. etc.

Let’s have another obligatory macro shot:

Ah, that’s the stuff.