At The End of My Yarn

Twist and turns, baby!

So. I know I said last time that I would be knitting this from stash, but we all knew that was going to be a lie. The accent color is stash, so that counts for something (right?)! I used Neighborhood Fiber Co. Organic Studio Sock in Little Italy, and the main color and contrasting color is Cloudborn Highland Fingering in Taupe and Stone Heather, which was at that time on closeout at Webs for four bucks a skein so naturally I jumped. I grabbed a skein of the Stormy Skies colorway as the original accent color (a pretty sedated blue) because dude, four bucks a skein for 494 yards of wool fingering? Count this cheapskate in! However, once my yarn had arrived and I really started to think about it, I grabbed the studio sock instead. Glad I did, it pops much brighter than the blue did.

Got the first clue through Ravelry and that was one of the longest workdays of my life, waiting to get home, cast on, and figure out what the hell West was on about. Caved (sensing a trend here) near the end of the day and went on Ravelry to spoil myself. The suspense was killing me!

Flash forward a week and change, the second clue just came out, and I am laughably behind on the first clue. Enjoying it, though! I’m about four repeats through with…um…ten to go? Ten more increasingly larger pattern repeats? Bring it. The Highland Fingering is genuinely fun to knit with a glorious bouncy woolen-spun texture. Much better than what I was expecting for the sale price point, to be honest. Once I get to the second clue (which will at some point happen) the accent color comes in to play. Looking forward to it!

Well, penitentiary Monkeys. Close enough. I spent this weekend at the historical West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville, WV for the annual Para-con, complete with overnight investigation of the massive prison. I had to leave early last year when my friend had to leave but this year I was able to investigate the whole night. Had a wonderful time!

Took a moment to photograph my new pair of Monkey socks, a classic pattern by Cookie A. The lace pattern is easily memorized, and knits up so quickly that these socks just fly by. The yarn is Borgo de’ Pazzi Firenze Bice, in a colorway that is either coffee colored or elderly dog sick colored, depending on the day. It’s my first time using this yarn, and it knits up like it’s got more nylon than the ball band says. It’s a little rough on the fingers, but that should translate to a pair of long-lasting socks.

After seemingly ages of having this knit languishing on my needles, I’ve finished my Sea Glass Tee by Wool and Pine! I feel bad. What should have been a quick knit (judging by the start and end dates on other’s projects in Ravelry) took me almost a year. I ran out of steam once I spit for the armholes and started my way down. However, after buckling down (and bringing it to Maine with me so that I’d have to knit on it if I wanted to knit at all) I finished it! I didn’t add any length to the sleeves, so they’re just cap sleeves but it fits pretty well. I used mainly sock yarn scraps, with a little bit of KnitPicks Palette. The Palette disappointed me, though. I hadn’t even finished knitting the body when it broke in several places in the yoke. Never a bad time to learn duplicate stitch. Luckily, the colors are so busy on this sweater that I can do a beginner’s job on the duplicate stitches and you can’t really tell.

The way the pattern is written you change out both yarns every row using the magic knot technique, but I did it every couple of rows (and once I got past the yoke didn’t switch out yarns for inches at a time). The great thing about Wool and Pine’s patterns is that they come with multiple videos for techniques, etc., such as the Sea Glass Tee pattern having a video for the magic knot (a method for joining colors without weaving in ends).

I don’t generally wear short socks. They get kicked off while sleeping, and they slide to the bottom of the bed and hide from me. Even worse, sometimes they get swallowed up in my shoe while I’m walking and that’s guaranteed to ruin the moment. Short socks leave me with too much leftover yarn. I much prefer to knit and wear longer socks. However, despite all that, I sometimes get the itch for a quick knit, and a quick new pair of socks. This time around I turned to a pair of Rose City Rollers by Mary Catherine Bryner. This was my first time knitting this pattern, and I see why it’s such a popular design. I used some seriously ancient ONLine Supersocke and knocked out a pair in a few days.

Sure, yeah, I’ve got more than half the skein left, but I can easily imagine striping the rest with a solid yarn (or another self-striping or tonal) to make another pair.

I’m spending this week up in Maine to see my family, a.k.a driving around the yarn store capital of America. It certainly feels that way! I’ve made a promise to myself to rein it in little, I’ve still got stash from the last time I was up here that hasn’t been touched. And, to be honest, from the last few times I was in Maine as well. Trying one’s best to use up older stash first does lend to yarn ageing gracefully in the stash for a while. Good thing yarn doesn’t spoil!

“One can only cite the elegant appearance of Garter stitch. It forms beautiful crinkly ridges, which are handsome in themselves. They can be employed horizontally or vertically or both and enable the structure of offbeat knitted pieces to be visible and organically decorative. I like to think that the very first knitter, doodling with sticks and sinews at the sunny entrance to his cave, or peering at his knitting by the flickering firelight, doodled with, or peered at, Garter stitch; the bread and cheese of knitting, the basic stitch — surely the prototype.” — Elizabeth Zimmermann, Knit One Knit All

I’ve never met a knitter (or read a knitter’s books) who stretched a pattern to the limits in order to avoid a purl stitch like Zimmermann did. She purled only when she had to, and then only with reluctance. To be honest, I’ve been skimming through some of the other Zimmermann books in my library to find where I first heard about her dislike for the stitch, and so far I found a quote from Knitting Without Tears “Why do so many of us object to purling? Is it because as children we are taught to knit first, and are then presented with purling as the second and more difficult step? Who knows? Who is willing to take a little innocent child and teach it to purl first? You must admit it’s the trickier of the two.”

Knit One Knit All, therefore, is a collection of Zimmermann’s garter stitch designs. There is a good variety of patterns, starting with hats and working through to jackets. Despite the constraints of only knitting every row (although now that I use that word, I wonder how much of a constraint it really was to Zimmermann, considering her preference for the stitch). There are quite a few patterns I had never seen before, which was cool to see. The cover hat, the Chambered Nautilus Tam for instance is a hat made out of a spiraling i-cord. The pattern instructions for the book are a mix of Zimmermann’s more conversation writing style (more like a description of how to knit the item and less of a row-by-row list of directions) which I find makes this book a bit more beginner-friendly in comparison to her Knitter’s Almanac. Something I learned while researching this post is that Zimmermann’s company Schoolhouse Press has a very comprehensive website. I’ve been trying to order less from Amazon, etc. and more from small businesses, and I learned that you can order books, yarn, and individual patterns directly from the Schoolhouse Press website. I’ll have to take a closer look!

Shifting gears, this weekend I participated in a paranormal investigation of the USS Wisconsin along with the Wraith Chasers and hosted by Haunted Nights Paranormal Events. Very cool night!

Getting there from Fredericksburg to Norfolk, I was so giddy over driving through the midway tunnel (dork) that I took a wrong turn once I emerged from the other end and ended up driving through it twice more before I managed to reach the park where the battleship is permanently docked. I parked my car in the first available spot I found (a bit of a nail-biter there, the sign said two hour parking and I was going to be gone for quite a bit longer). Next time I’m in the area I want to check out the science center nearby and take a proper tour of the battleship itself. Fascinating history! If you’re interested in some more photographs and ghostly details, check out my up-coming Patreon post.