Category Archives: Clothing

Be Good Johnny

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I have been a good boy lately. (I am strictly talking about being a good knitting boy here. I know it doesn’t seem like I have been much of a good boy if you are judging by the frequency that I update this blog and comment on other blogs. After staring at computers all day for work, coming home to look at a computer again has gone down on my priority list. Now staring at fiber and yarn! In any case, back to my original train of thought.) I finished the Kokomo socks at the end of last month.

Since they are not made for me, I can’t show them on the hoof. Hopefully, they will fit the recipient. The following do fit the recipient, though.

Yes, the Naiad socks in Winter Twilight came off the needles last night. And, as I said, they do fit the recipient…

Me!

And with these two pairs done, I haven’t put a new pair of socks on the needles yet. (Not that I don’t have socks from over a year ago still on the needles, but we need not get into that. I am trying to convince you what a good boy I am. No need to shame me.) I have gotten out some fiber, though.

Doing a little pre-drafting in preparation for some spinning. We shall see how it turns out.

Copyright 2010 by G. P. Donohue for textillian.com

Twilight Zone

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Yeah! The first sock is done.

Sexy pose, no? Crappy photography, no? I do love the sock, though I am still not sure if I picked the right stitch pattern for the colorway (Winter Twilight). It is a fun knit, and that is what matters the most to me right now.

And do I like the yarn?

Yes. Actually, only the top three are Naiad from Dragonfly Fibers (in Oriole-Dubious, Canyon Flower, and Rocky Top). The bottom two are Djinni, also from Dragonfly Fibers (in Winter Twilight, again, and Reluctant Dragon). I got them at the Homespun Yarn Party this past Sunday. It was so close to my house that it is hard to stay away. I also got these.

The roving is merino and silk from Neighborhood Fiber (colorway unknown), as is the blue merino/cashmere/nylon sock yarn next to it (in Palisades). The other yarn in the photo is Bugga from Sanguine Gryphon (in Marpesia Marcella).

Now, you may be wondering where the yarn from Sheila is. Well, I have it on order, and you probably won’t be seeing it here for a while, as it is going to be part of a gift for someone who may actually visit this site on occasion. I know, bummer; but just think: Anticipation!

Copyright 2010 by G. P. Donohue for textillian.com

Blue (Da Ba Dee)

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Here’s a pic of my current knitting and spinning projects.

Can you guess what my favorite color is?

For the Ice Ice Baby sock, I am nearing the finish line.

I am on the leg of the second sock, so hopefully I will finish it up in the next week.

Kokomo is making slower progress.

But it is progress, nonetheless.

And finally, my first new sock of 2010. (Yes, I have held out this long!)

The yarn is Naiad from Dragonfly Fibers in the Winter Twilight colorway. The yarn is superwash merino/bamboo/nylon. I really like it. Nice and smooth, and a bit heathery in color.

I am waiting until I finish the toe before deciding on a stitch pattern for the sock, that way I will have a better idea of where the colors will fall. I do know that it is going to be “just” a knit/purl pattern, something that will keep my interest without requiring lots and lots of attention.

Finally!

I finished spinning the pound of Romney and mohair roving that I got at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival a couple of years ago. I did about twelve ounces of the singles while I was off for President’s Day, and did all of the plying from center-pull balls this weekend. I am pretty happy with how it came out. While I normally don’t wash the handspun I use for weaving, this has a fair amount of oil still in it, so I may just wash it all before I use it to weave with, to save any of it from getting on the loom. When the weaving will take place, who knows?

Copyright 2010 by G. P. Donohue for textillian.com

Here You Come Again

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By now, you have probably heard about the second helping of snow that we are currently getting. It is a concern because it looks like we will may be stuck for a while because of this.

Mr. Penney and I have been fortunate in that we have not lost power for any significant period of time. Last time I remember anything this bad was back when I was in second grade. We had blizzards in February that basically meant that we only went to school a few days during that month. (There was a week about 15 years ago where we got hit with a few storms within a week that dumped a lot of snow on us, but I was away on business for part of that, so I didn’t get the full effect on that one.

I did manage to finish knitting the second baby sweater today.

I don’t have any buttons for it, so when it will be totally finished, I do not know. Maybe March?

I am not sure the stitch pattern switch was a good one for this sweater. There is kind of a chevron effect going on with the modified vine stitch, causing the garter area to get a bit distorted. While blocking will help this, the final recipient probably won’t understand what is going on once she washes it. Looks like I have some explaining to do.

Please take care out there. It is a mess.

Copyright 2010 by G. P. Donohue for textillian.com

Baby Talk

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It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Don’t worry, I am still knitting. In fact, I am working on baby sweaters because pregnancy seems to be contagious at the moment. Two friends of mine are expecting their first offspring at any moment now, and my niece is expect her first child in July, so I have to get crackin’.

The first of these is done and delivered.

It is the Elizabeth Zimmerman Baby Surprise Jacket. This is a remarkable neat design, but I have to say that although it is all garter stitch, it is not really “mindless” knitting for me, at least in the beginning. This is because the decreases used for the miters at the beginning of the sweater don’t lend themselves to regular stitch markers. You have to use something like safety pins that actually go in the stitch, otherwise you will just be constantly moving around stitch markers. Once the decreases were done, though, I was able to use the stitch markers to mark the stitches that get the increase on either side. It is just a matter of me getting over that initial hump. (Strange that the part involving increases wound up being the “downhill” side of knitting this garment.)

The yarn is Sheep Feet from Sheep Shop. (Say that five times fast.) It was a nice yarn to work with, although there were flaws, where they spliced the yarn, in each of the two skeins that I used. For the price, I expected better.

This is the current baby sweater that I am working on:

It is another February Baby Sweater from Knitter’s Almanac. Since this is the third time that I am working this pattern, I am trying a different lace pattern for the main portion of the sweater. I made a slight change to the Vine Lace pattern from A Treasury of Knitting Patterns from Barbara Walker so that it is only a seven stitch repeat rather than the nine stitch repeat that it is in the book. (I did this by change the k2’s to k1’s.) Since taking this photo, I have finished the first sleeve, and am about to start the other sleeve. But problem that I am having at the moment is that the second sleeve is falling at an odd place in the lace pattern that I have changed over to. (The original sweater had no extra stitches outside of the repeats. The one I changed over to has one extra stitch.) One stitch either way probably won’t make too much of a difference, but I need to think it through more to be sure.

The yarn for this one is Jitterbug, again. Colinette has upped the yardage on Jitterbug to 400 yards. This might make it valuable for socks again! Hooray!

Now, back to shoveling snow.

Yes, I am tired of winter. I became tired of it over a month ago.

Copyright 2010 by G. P. Donohue for textillian.com

Kokomo

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It’s been a while since I have actually talked about what I am actually working on, so I figured now would be as good of a time as any to do that. First, the infamous Ice Ice Baby sock.

I took this photo this morning. I finished off the first sock this evening after dinner, ready to start the second sock. Roseann found another boo-boo in the instructions, so I will be updating the errata post for the sock with that information. Again, it is not a matter of fit, just how the stitches fall, setting things up for the 1×1 ribbing for the cuff.

Before I was able to bring Ice Ice Baby to Wednesday night knitting (because the pattern had not been released yet), I started the summer sock from Sheila’s sock club, Kokomo.

I converted the pattern to a toe-up sock and used a short row heel. I am knitting these on 2.25 mm needles instead of 2.5 mm, as the recipient has really tiny feet (at least in comparison to my feet).

Finally, with all of this knitting, I felt the need to do something other than knitting during the holidays. Fortunately, my swap partner in the Winter Wonderland Swap sent me some alpaca roving. I spun that up in no time and am now working my way through a pound of Romney/mohair blend that I got at the MSWF a couple years ago.

The black singles are the alpaca, and the blue/green/purple is the Romney/mohair. I will be winding these off their bobbins into center-pull balls so do two ply onto themselves. That is pretty much my default means of making a two ply.

Copyright 2010 by G. P. Donohue for textillian.com

Ice Ice Baby Errata

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Sorry guys, I found a mistake in the pattern.

For the leg portion, where it says:

Do this for 14 rounds total.

It should be:

Do this for 12 rounds total.

This mistake on my part won’t affect fit. It just means that the cabling on the icicles on the back of the leg are starting differently than those on top of the foot. If you are already past this point in the pattern, I would recommend just doing whatever you need to do to make the socks match.

Sorry for the error.

Hope everyone had a happy holiday!

UPDATE: Roseann found where a knit and a purl got transposed in the first round of the cuff. The first round for the cuff should be:

Round 1: [(K1, p1) 3x, k2tog, (p1, k1) 2x, p2tog] 6x. You are back down to 72 sts.

Copyright 2009 by G. P. Donohue for textillian.com

Let’s Talk About Sex

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I mean socks! Yes, socks! Let’s talk about socks. Definitely socks! Reference

For the past few years, I have been mainly doing socks. While I did a few pairs of socks in my early knitting “career”, it wasn’t until I got Sensational Knitted Socks that I really got into knitting socks, and specifically toe-up socks. When anyone asks me for a reference book on socks, SKS is the book I recommend without reservation. It just opened my eyes to see all those numbers together and see the pattern of how it all worked out.

Now, why toe-up? I believe that I have talked about this before, but for the sake of having this all in one place, I put it here too: It is better for me to short change the leg in length than it is for me to short change the foot in length because of the fear of running out of yarn. I have a big foot, at least as far as sock yarn manufacturers are concern, and the sock yarn that I like can be kind of pricey. Buying two skeins of a pricey yarn just to make one pair of socks is a lot even for a spendthrift like me. (Ok, I am really not a spendthrift, but I do like nice yarn. MMMMMM, yarn!) Doing toe-up means that I will have a pair of socks that fit without fear of buying a second skein or ripping out and re-knitting.

So here is what I generally do for socks: First, I have a magic number for my sock yarn – knitting needle pairing. This magic number is the number of stitches used around most of the leg and most of the foot if knitting stockinette or rib. As an example, some sock yarns, I use 64 stitches on 2.5 mm knitting needles as my magic number. For some thinner and/or softer sock yarns, I use 72 stitches on 2.25 mm knitting needles as my magic number. The development of this number comes through testing and personal preference. For socks, I like a firmer stitch than I would for a sweater.

Please note, these numbers are not carved in stone. If I need to add or subtract a stitch to get a stitch pattern to workout correctly, I will do it. Knitting is not an exact science, and a stitch here or there is probably not going to make the difference in whether a sock will fit or not. If you’ll notice, both of my magic numbers are divisible by 8. This makes a lot of calculations that I do for toes and heels easier. I will get into those calculations in other posts. Being divisible by 8 (and the latter one being divisible by 9), also makes putting together stitch patterns for socks easier. Math is a wonderful thing!

While I have tried a number of different toes (that certainly sounds like an odd phrase) for socks, I keep going back to the one that I found in SKS, where a small rectangle is knit and stitches are picked up around the rectangle as the base for the increases for the toe. I find that this toe gives a nice curve to the tip (no “ears” that some people talk about with the figure 8 cast-on), a good length for the toes (whirlpool toe seems to be a bit too short for my foot), and it works well with hand-dyed yarns (no noticeable change in color sequence that can be seen on a short-row toe.)

Once I am done the toe, I am now up to my magic number; and I work the rest of the foot, with the top of the foot being in pattern, while the sole is in stockinette. But this leads to a big question, when do I stop knitting the foot, and start knitting the heel? This depends on two things: foot length and type of heel being knit.

Foot length is pretty self-explanatory. When knitting socks for myself, I just use the length of my forearm as a reference for the length of my foot, since they just happen to be the same. Oh, the wonders of the body! If I am making socks for someone else, I use the charts in SKS that convert shoe size to various foot measurements, including foot length. There are conversions available on the web as well, just do a Google search on “shoe sizes in inches”.

The type of heel that I am going to use for the sock matters in when I stop knitting the foot and start knitting the heel because different heel designs are of different lengths. (Foot length minus heel length equals when I start work the heel.) I generally choose among three heels: short row heel, heel flap gusset, and, most recently, the results of my heel experiment. In all three cases, I use something that I have already knit to determine this length: the toe.

For the short row heel, the heel is pretty much the same size and shape as the toe, so I just use the length of the toe as the length of my heel.

One thing that you will notice in this photo and the next couple is that this is all approximation. I really don’t like to break out the ruler or tape measure when knitting, which is why I use the toe for my measurements. It is a matter of convenience. In all cases the length of the toe is going to be a little longer than the heel measurement. Again, since knitting is not an exact science, this is ok. When faced with the choice of going a couple rows short on foot length as opposed to going a couple rows long, I always choose short, because the knitting will stretch to make up for the difference in length. For me, having my knitting stretch a little (which makes it wear a little faster) is a better option than having my knitting bunch up under foot (which will cause blisters and other general discomfort.) That said, my socks last me for years. My oldest pair of socks finally wore out after 15 years of use.

For the heel flap heel, I don’t use the entire toe length, but just the measurement of the increases for the toe doubled.

Why only the increase portion? Because I do a slip stitch pattern (eye of partridge) for the heel flap, which shortens the length a bit.

Finally, for the heel experiment, it is the length of the toe doubled.

I will go into more detail about the construction of the heel for the heel experiment in another post.

By the way, which heel I choose to knit is more about whim than anything else. Sometimes I feel like a nut; sometime I don’t. That is not to say that one heel doesn’t have certain design advantages over another, just that it really doesn’t play much of a factor in my choice.

At this point, all of my decisions are made. I knit the heel and start the leg, back to the magic number I was at just before the heel.

Now, why write all this up? Well, hopefully this will demystify toe-up socks for someone out there. I have heard a few people say “I can’t do toe-up socks.” Maybe this will start them on the path of being able to knit toe-up socks. If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments. (BTW, I am currently having router issues such that I am not able to send email out. If you sent me an email, I am not ignoring you. I am just having technical difficulties.)

Copyright 2009 by G. P. Donohue for textillian.com