Sockpocalypse Summer, part 6 – Yarn Chicken Pomatomus

We are just now over the hill of our Sockpocalypse Summer (confused? Here are parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), and my fingers are getting tired as well as my brains. And it’s all the fault of this gorgeous pair of socks.

I mean, beautiful, right?

When my knitting friend Leslie from Colorado requested this particular skein of Knit Picks Hawthorne in Irvington (not discontinued for once, but on back order…foreshaaaaaaadowing…), I knew I had to pull out the big guns. When you knit things for other knitters, you better make sure you got game. Otherwise, why wouldn’t they just make it for themselves?

Seriously, this is a real concern.

I knew that Cookie A. would save me by providing a pattern with lots of wonderful fiddly bits, and I was right. Enter Cookie A.’s infamous-in-the-knitting-world (and should be famous in the real world) Pomatomus Socks. When these socks hit the scene, people lost their minds. There are over 5000 pairs of Pomatomus socks on Ravelry, even though Ravelry wasn’t developed for another two years after its publication in 2005.

At the yarn shop where I worked for several years, I helped people pick out hundreds of skeins of sock yarn for this very sock pattern, plus the multitude of variations that other knitters have created over the years, like hats, fingerless gloves, and shawls with that instantly recognizable twisted stitch fish scale lace.

I even knit a pair myself, for my friend Tillie, back in 2009. It’s got a boatload of twisted stitches, patterning every single row, and non-rectangular charts with mysterious stitch-shifting to get the pattern to line up correctly.

It has this brilliant heel section where the scales morph into the heel and continue the all-over pattern without disrupting the construction somehow. It’s a Cookie A. nightmare-dreamscape of knitting, and I absolutely love it. It’s definitely the kind of big swing that one experienced knitter takes for another.

However, this time, things took an unexpected turn.

As soon as I had finished the first sock, I knew something was off. The amount that I had left over definitely didn’t feel right. I took it to my scale to see if I could figure it out.

Standard sock yarn skeins come in 50g and 100g weights. This first sock, made to accommodate Leslie’s perfectly normal size US 9 feet, weighed in at 51g. Meaning that I only had 49g left to make the second one. No matter, I thought. Maybe there’s a tiny extra bit in this skein, just to make me happy.

The bit of cuff that I had knit, plus the remainder of the ball also came to 51g, BUT that was including the 3 sock needles currently in use. I knew that this was a losing battle. (However, I did feel pretty chuffed that I could tell the 2g difference completely with my special knitting-based mind powers.)

Now, yarn chicken is a game that I have played before many times. When it works out perfectly, and you have only a tiny bit of yarn left but the project is complete, it is the greatest feeling in the world. When you lose…you just feel like a crazy person.

The entire second half of the second sock I felt like I was knitting through molasses, my fingers slowly prodding through those twisted stitches just in case knitting slower might make the yarn last longer. I just kept praying that it didn’t end in a weird spot, right in the middle of those glorious fish scales. Luckily, this is what I had left over when I got to the toe shaping.

However, it didn’t last very long. A few minutes later, the yarn was all gone, and I still had 18 rounds left to go.

I looked online to see if Knit Picks still had the Irvington colorway, but it was listed as on back order until July, meaning that there was no way on Earth I’d be able to get the same colorway or any yarn at all until August. I checked on Ravelry to see if anyone was willing to sell or trade a skein with me, but there was nothing available. I had to admit defeat and that I had lost this terrible round of yarn chicken and resign myself to the fact that these were not going to be the perfect Pomatomus socks that I had planned.

Fortunately, I keep all of my sock yarn odds and ends, so I had plenty of options to give to Leslie as to the yarn that would finish off this second toe.

Leslie chose this beautiful bit of yarn, which some of you may remember as the stunningly beautiful Pagewood Farms Denali from my Drachenschwingen socks a few years ago.

I have to admit, the gold, purple, and blue tones in the yarn really do look lovely in there.

So, even though I played yarn chicken and lost, I still managed to make something unique and so-very knitterly for a fellow knitter. She can wear these with pride, showing off those fish scales…

…while always having a special secret toe hidden inside her shoes that no one else has to know about.

It doesn’t get any better than that.

Sockpocalypse…an interlude

Lest any one think that all I do all day is knit socks, I wanted to take some time to brag about show off catalog the other things that I’ve been working on during the Sockpocalypse. In addition to the studying for my NP board test that I’m supposed to be doing, of course.

Like everyone else in the world, my first thought was to take advantage of the extra time to make bread!

Foccacia and soft pretzels were enjoyed for many, many days. I’m not sure what it is about humans and the need to do clever things with yeast when we’re bored, but I’m certainly happy that the phenomenon exists. Then the baked goods kept on coming.

Brownies and cranberry cake made appearances, which is not unusual in this house.

Then, I had to start getting creative. We did Grow Dat‘s CSA box again this year, and got inundated with amazing fresh mint, basil, and both hot and sweet peppers that I had to figure out how to deal with. (Please do click on the Grow Dat link! I cannot say enough good things about this amazing place and the wonderful work that they do!)

So, mint lemonade.

Dried lemon balm for tea.

Vegan pesto with tons of basil, sundried tomatoes, and walnuts. (Not that I don’t love regular pesto, but Dan hates cheese, so I had to branch out. Turns out I like it way more this way!)

Sweet pickled jalapeno slices! Which is the only way I can even approach a spicy pepper.

I’ve made these several times now, and they taste just like homemade barbecue sauce. So freaking good.

And I made blistered shishito peppers for the first time! Grow Dat exposed us to so many new delicious things this year, and it was really wonderful to enjoy something that I would have never known to purchase for myself before. Then I got out the big pickling/canning guns and made spicy dill pickles out of the abundance of cucumbers from our backyard garden.

This isn’t even all the cucumbers! Those vines were going crazy.

Trip was mad that he couldn’t get on the table, but I think he approved deep down inside.

And even though I bought the wrong thing and ended up having to use a mix of dried dill leaves and dill seeds, they were still delicious. And, to wrap it all up, I made a whole boatload of ice cream.

Making ice cream from scratch really satisfies a love of fiddly things and rigorous mise en place in me. I love getting out all of the different bowls and prepping all the little whisking stations for myself.

And you just get the thickest, creamiest, most delicious stuff in the world. All recipes from the Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home book that serves as my ice cream bible.

I think we’re set for a while.

Next time, a return to your regularly-scheduled sock programming. I just needed to give my fingers and my brain a break.

Sockpocalypse Summer, part 5 – Mountain Retro Ribs

Today’s Sockpocalypse socks go out to my high school friend, Cammie.

Now, I’m sure some of you are thinking, wow, Jinger, it’s kind of ridiculous that you, someone who will be 38 years old in two weeks, still has so many friends from high school to send knitted garments to. And yes, you are right. For some reason, I hung out with the best people, and even if we aren’t still in each others’ everyday lives, there are still deep connections there that only take a second’s worth of interaction to restore.

Case in point. Cammie was my “big sister” in high school, meaning that she was a senior when I was a freshman, and she showed me around the school and helped me get around the first few weeks. She seemed to get me immediately. She was warm and friendly and sassy as all get out. She introduced me to Drama Club and the fabulous weird wonderful people of the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Club, establishing a now undying love of theatre and the arts that may not have existed without her prompting. She had amazing mid-90s style, captured in pictures that I used to have, but got destroyed in Hurricane Katrina, unfortunately.

She went above and beyond and became my real, actual friend, rather than just showing me how to get to my classes on time. Of course she deserves a pair of socks.

Cammie chose a skein of Knit Picks Stroll Tonal in Mountain Pass, which is a rich mix of grassy greens, teals, and blues. (And we appear to be back on the discontinued colorway train, people! It’s seriously the colorway used in the gauge swatch on the website, and you can’t buy it! Get it together, Knit Picks!)

The pattern is Retro Rib Socks by Evelyn A. Clark, from my now-getting-worn-out copy of the Interweave Favorite Socks book. I’ve made a pair of socks from this pattern once before, three years ago when I filled my summer with socks in much the same way I’m doing now. That pair was for my dad, and knit with a much darker and more rigid yarn.

I really like how different the pattern looks with just a change in yarn. The softer colors and softer hand of the yarn really let the vertical twisted stitch ribs pop out of the background fabric in a striking way.

I did the same heel modification here that I did back then as well, carrying up the twisted stitches as slip stitches in the heel flap while leaving the rest of the heel in stockinette stitch. I just really enjoy how it elongates the foot, letting the vertical elements of the pattern go all the way down to the sole.

It just makes for a very elegant sock, in my opinion.

The only requirement that Cammie wanted was for her socks to be “slouchable” if possible.

The fact that the ribbing doesn’t pull too tight makes it so that these socks can be slouched, folded, or pulled all the way up and still look and feel good. Plus, Stroll has a ridiculous 462 yds. per skein, so you can really go crazy on the leg length if you want.

We’re officially halfway on the Sockpocalypse Summer train, and the official first day of summer (which is my birthday, woo wooooo) hasn’t even arrived yet. My hands are getting tired, but my resolve stays strong.

Sockpocalypse Summer, part 4 – Shadow Braid Socks

For today’s Sockpocalypse update, we have a whole lot of purple.

Ooooooooooh.

My friend Kirsten from high school, the personification of a ray of sunshine, chose this gorgeous skein for her own during this Sockpocalypse Summer experiment, and I couldn’t have been happier to make it into something lovely for her.

The yarn is Knit Picks Hawthorne Fingering Kettle Dye in Goddess. (And, miracle of miracles, it isn’t discontinued! You can actually buy it! Go get your hands on some of this goddess goodness.) It has multiple shades of royal purple, fuchsia, and lavender, giving the whole thing this wonderful depth without so much variation that you can’t get some stitch patterns in there.

Also, as we already know, dark purple socks are impossible to photograph perfectly, so these socks look like a bajillion different colors in these pictures. The picture of the skein by itself is the truest to life, if you are a stickler about these things.

In fact, this yarn was so dark and difficult to see when I was working with it, that Dan had to rig up a little extra lighting for me so that I could tell what the hell I was doing. I needed an overhead floor lamp, plus my usual over-the-shoulder lamp, plus I had to use some lighter bamboo and rosewood needles because I couldn’t see anything with my fancy-pants green variegated ones.

The pattern is Cookie A.‘s Angee socks from her fantastic book, Sock Innovation. They are a perfect distillation of the Cookie A. sock playbook. If you are an adventurous knitter, you’ll know exactly what I mean. First of all, the pattern itself looks like cables, right?

Nope! It’s actually a cleverly-disguised lace panel pattern, with the texture coming from strategically-placed decreases. I made these while having a resurgence of watching numerous favorite detective shows like Sherlock, Endeavour, and Monk (I guess I’ve got a thing for prickly detectives…), so the Shadow Braid name for these seemed appropriate. They look like they are full of depth and shadow, but it’s all an illusion. (ooooooooo…imagine I just waved my hands around like a magician when I said that.)

Secondly, there’s an odd number of repeats of this lace panel, five to be exact, which is definitely not typical. Most sock patterns with a panel-type structure either have three, four, six, or eight repeats spread out over the cuff of the sock. This makes it so that you can use only 3 or 4 double-pointed needles in the process and not have to worry about trying to use stitch markers to keep track on such teeny tiny needles. (Not that I haven’t had to do that before for a Cookie A. pattern, but she’s definitely not the norm.) Instead, for this pattern, we have to figure out how to keep track of five repeats, so…five needles it is! It felt like reaching into a bag of porcupines every time I had to start a needle, but it did make this fun little pentagram shape for summoning friendly sock-loving spirits.

And thirdly, in true Cookie A. fashion, there were three different charts to keep track of as the pattern transitioned from cuff to heel to instep, and that stuff just pleases me to no end. The fiddilier, the better. Cookie A. sees every single stitch pattern through to the end with these really pleasing and harmonious designs, and making them, although mentally-taxing at times, is truly a delight.

Plus, this week I had some really cute nail polish going on, and I couldn’t stop ogling it next to that purple. I felt like a mermaid.

See? Cute!

One note about the Hawthorne, just in case you jump on that Kettle Dyed Goddess train with me. These kettle dye variants often feel very…crunchy when you first wind them up and knit with them. I’m not sure why it happens so often with kettle-dyed and tonal variant yarns, but I imagine it has something to do with the dyeing process. They tend to have a lot of residual dye sitting on the surface, which leads to that crunchy and plasticky feeling, and will also tend to stain your fingertips and nails if you work with the yarn for extended periods of time. However, with this particular brand, when you block the yarn, that extra dye washes out easily, leaving the rinse water bright pink but the yarn now very soft with a light brushed halo around the strand, not sacrificing the base color you fell in love with. But, if you combined this yarn with something lighter, like with stripes, you definitely run the risk of bleeding and staining occurring, so just keep that in mind.

I sent these off today to Kirsten in Florida, sending all my love with them. It was hard to part with their jewel-tone loveliness, but I hope she’ll love them just as much as I do. We all need a little bit of extra love right now.