Zau. Ber. Ball.

ZAU.

BER.

BALL.

You know you want to chant it with me. ZAU. BER. BAAAAALLLLLLL.

I mean, what else is there to say? I’ve been wanting to make socks from a skein of Schoppel-Wolle Zauberball 100 since the first time I laid eyes on one of those beautiful things.

If you’re not in the know about the glory of Zauberball, I highly recommend you visit their site, where you will be confronted with the craziest color combinations in sock yarn you’ve ever seen, all performed with slow fades throughout the skein. You can get one looooooong ombré from one color to another, or crazy parrot-clown-unicorn stripes, or anything that you can think of in-between. When I saw that McNeedles (a lovely little LYS in Lacombe, LA, that is now sadly, tragically closed) had a little basket of Zauberball lovelies to try, I knew that I had to take my chance, because it’s not a yarn that you see often out in the wild, due to the sheer ridiculous amount of colorways that they have.

I chose colorway 2229 Sphinx, with its lovely rusty oranges and teal/royal blue combinations, going through several different dark and cool grays in its transitional moments. I wanted to do something just sort of lightly-patterned with it. Not completely stockinette because I thought I’d get bored, but not so pattern-y that the ombré fades would get lost.

I ended up choosing the Merino Lace Socks pattern by Anne Woodbury from the Interweave Favorite Socks book that has served me so well during all of these sock-knitting years. It was originally written for the two-circular needle technique, but I’m a DPN sock knitter all the way, so some futzing had to be done.

Although the pattern itself is lovely, I think that if I get another chance to Zauberball it, I’d go with a plain stockinette or ribbing, because I do think that there’s something lost in the fade with a pattern here.

But I do really love them regardless! They are so freaking warm, and the colors really pop in the sunlight in a way that I’ve never really seen before in an un-plyed yarn.

And those fades…oh they look very, very special straight down those lacy panels.

Really, the only thing that trips me up here is how the ombré gets broken by the heels. I’m not sure how on earth I’d be able to accomplish something different, unless there is a specific sock pattern written specifically to keep this in mind, and this is also a very nit-picky (knit-picky? ha!) complaint here. They are lovely, truly, and I am overly critical.

I mean…look at them.

That blue is just a show-stopper.

And they fit in well with my other handknit socks, yes?

I think I need a bigger sock drawer.

I feel like I can honestly now say that I am no longer terrified of my sewing machine…the Blue Daisy Apron

I only have a completely normal, healthy level of completely understandable apprehension now, guys! Yay for me!

So I made an apron! And you guys, I am so proud of this dang thing. This is the first thing I’ve sewn that has notions involved.

Notions! (Tiny snaps also involved but not pictured because…I forgot.)

And drafting an actual pattern! On real paper!

Are we tired of exclamation points yet?!

If you’re completely new to the sewing process, please take this tip from me (And I’m pretty sure from Bernadette Banner and Morgan Donner, who I’m 95% sure I stole this from): get yourself a giant cheap roll of wrapping paper with the 1″ grid lines on the back. That way, you don’t need to measure out perfect straight lines or right angles, you just need to be able to count squares. It’s amazing.

I think part of my problem with sewing has been that, unlike knitting, you can’t often jump right into a project once you have your materials (we don’t count the process of making a swatch here, because at least that’s still knitting). You have to do a fair amount of prep work, like washing, drying, and ironing your fabric to make sure it doesn’t warp. And cutting out your paper pieces. And then, somehow (!) having to iron everything again approximately 1000 times over and over again during the whole process. It is a truly disturbing amount of ironing.

I was so determined to get this damn thing right and be patient, so I followed every instruction to the letter. Pattern is the Cook’s Apron from the Liberty Book of Home Sewing, if you’re so inclined. (Apologies for the Am*z*n link, I couldn’t find it on B&N.)

I dutifully measured and pinned and ironed everything to within an inch of my sanity, and do you know what I discovered?

It makes the damn sewing so much freaking easier.

For years (years!), I have sat and wondered why I had such a hard time with sewing. I wondered why I couldn’t hold things in place properly, why my hands and fingers seemed like they weren’t long enough or smart enough to do this, why it seemed so easy for other people? Turns out, people who sew have eleventy-billion tools to help them with the damn sewing for a reason! Who knew?

Now, this is devolving into just a bunch of pictures of things with pins in them and then stitched together no longer with pins in them, but that is mostly because I don’t really have the vocabulary to describe the process here. I’m sure it is super simple for people who know what they’re doing, but for me it felt like a miracle. To make things short and sweet (like me!), you basically are just putting borders onto the sides of a basic apron shape, folding them over and stitching them down almost like the facing to an edge, but doing it backwards, so you end up with these lovely long lines of border with no raw edges anywhere.

I think my very favorite part is that I had the thread loaded the wrong way in the machine, so that the bobbin thread and top thread ended up contrasting with my colors, but I liked the way it looked so much that I left it that way. I really like seeing the stitch lines on the inside, almost like the contrast stitching on denim.

There’s an adjustable D-ring set for the neck tie.

There’s cute beveled edges on the waist ties.

Then, the pièce de résistance:

There’s a little “hand-wiper” towel thing that you can snap on and snap off!

Look at it! In action! With cookie scooping! In progress!

It’s earned a hallowed place alongside my other aprons, for sure. Now, the fabrics I used aren’t super heavy-duty. The pattern calls for twill, which is what my other sturdy workhorse apron is made out of, but I was only able to get plainer thick cotton for this. It’ll be fine for baking and other lighter-type floury things, which is what I’m usually doing anyway. Then I can save my meaty strong apron for things with grease and meat and stuff.

I mean, look how dang happy it makes me. Or maybe it was the cookies. Who knows?

I promise we’ll be back to our regularly-scheduled knitting content soon, but I just had to be excited for a second. I even have a second apron planned, this one with a (gasp) ruffle involved. I know, I know. Gotta dream big.

And now for something completely different: My First Circle Skirt Adventure

Careful readers may notice that I did not do my traditional yearly round-up post at the end of 2021. The reasons for this are many, but heavily due to the fact that I felt like last year was just a huge pile of crap for me, creativity-wise. Yes, I made a beautiful blanket that I was very proud of, plus some other very lovely things, but most of the time I just felt very lost and aimless. Luckily, Dan swooped in to help save the day, at least a little bit.

In the fall of 2020, Dan and I fixed up a craft room in our house for our various crafting projects, and one of the only things we were unable to achieve was the rehabilitation of my grandmother’s sewing machine from the 1960s. We tried multiple methods to get out that final stripped screw, but nothing has helped yet. So, for Christmas this year, Dan bought me a new sewing machine to cure my heartbreak.

So, of course, I had to jump in right away! I have very little sewing experience, especially with machine sewing, so I picked a project that I figured would be fairly simple, a circle skirt.

I used the very handy Circle Skirt Calculator at Mood Fabrics to get my general measurements, picked out some very pretty stretchy knit fabric at JoAnn’s, and got going. After at least a week of staring at the machine and fabric alternately and being terrified to start, that is.

The thing is, I am fairly afraid of sewing machines. Just in general. They are always trying to grab you and pull you into their pointy stabby bits. It’s like their favorite thing to do.

I mean, it looks so innocent, but it is very pointy and grabby and stabby, I promise.

However, with this new machine, I was determined to play nice and make it my friend. I did lots of practice on scrap fabric, practicing threading the machine, winding and threading the bobbin, and getting the thread tension right. I realized that I could adjust the speed and the thread tension so that I wasn’t freaking terrified of the damn thing.

Too bad there were only two machine-sewn seams in the whole skirt. (Don’t worry! I more than made up for this with my next project.)

As those of you who are much better sewists than me, or just have more common sense than I do, know, for a circle skirt, you basically use your waist measurement to cut out a circle of fabric for the skirt, then add a waistband. There really isn’t much to it, but I made sure to make it as slow and complicated as possible, as is my wont.

I took about an inch out the skirt when it looked like it was stretching way too much (which was a mistake, I really should have left it in and will do in the future, because the waistband is much less stretchy than the circle opening, which is cut on the bias), then after machine-stitching the skirt together and the waistband on, I whip-stitched the waistband facing down by hand.

And the very tiny rolled hem, which took ages to do.

I have to say, though, it might be my very favorite part because it came out perfect.

I really love the fabric, too. It reminds me of when people make sunprints by laying flowers and leaves down on photographic paper.

So pretty!

This is the only picture I have where the wind isn’t trying to blow me and my hair and the skirt all over the place, because last weekend was extremely windy just for spite.

See? Hair everywhere, but skirt lookin’ cute.

Wind again, but still adorable.

And here’s me demonstrating the best part of a circle skirt:  twirlability.

You feel like a poodle skirt fairy princess, even when the wind is trying to take you down.

We even got some cute little rainbows on it on the drive home, courtesy of the little crystal bunny that lives on my rearview mirror in my car. Overall, just a charming experience. Yes, it’s a little bit too small, but I learned so much even with making something so simple, plus overcame so much sewing-machine-based fear. I may have bought three more stretch knit fabrics this weekend to indulge myself, so stay tuned for more twirly goodness.

Autumntime Catch-Up Time: Ida Newbury

It feels insanely ridiculous to post this project now, even though it’s been nearly 80 degrees for the past three days here in New Orleans in December, but here we go anyway.

Ooh. She pretty.

I have a documented history of not really being able to do anything but panic in my brain when confronted with hurricane-type situations, as readers (hi, all three of you!) of this blog will know. (See past projects Hurricane Helix Socks and Hurricane Amanara for confirmation, if you need it.) In order to stave off this panic and prevent it from making me more of a mess than I already am, I often turn to knitting to help occupy my hands and my brain for a few precious hours, long enough for the storm to pass, or miss us completely, which is the way things had been going until this year.

Yep, 2021, in all of its glory, decided that, on top of everything else, that we should pack our extremely angry cats into my tiny electric car in order to drive to Austin to evacuate from Hurricane Ida. And I’m glad that we did, since we lost power for nearly a week, not to mention the entire city taking weeks to get restored to something resembling working order. But, while we were stuck in Austin, with nothing to do but sit and think what an insane situation we were in, what on earth were we to do?

Go to yarn stores, apparently. Dan and I took a trip to both Hill Country Weavers and Gauge Yarn (where I bought this project) and we found a small bit of peace and clarity. Both stores were remarkably lovely, with equally lovely and helpful staff. This beautiful tank top by Berroco was displayed on a mannequin in Gauge, and I fell in love immediately. I knew that it had to be my evacuation project. Something with really persnickety lace and then miles and miles of stockinette. Something to hold off the bad feelings, even if just for a moment.

The pattern is called Newbury, designed by Amy Palmer, and the yarn is Berroco Mantra Stonewash, which is just silky perfection. (And those adorable pride heart stitch markers are Birdie Parker Designs, if you absolutely need them now that you’ve seen them, like I did.)

After a delightfully little fiddly bit of lace knitting that shows up on the upper shoulders, the rest of this thing is just smooth sailing on stockinette in the round, with infrequent increase rows. It’s the perfect thing for when you’re stuck doing telemedicine in a pandemic when there are no pharmacies open across the entire city, while you’re in a another state. I understand that this is not a universal experience, but just trust me when I say it was extremely frustrating.

Like, look at that crazy lace! Double yarnovers are always something special.

There’s something art deco about it. Almost architectural.

This yarn is just a joy to work with, as well, because you end up with this slinky drapey fabric that feels so much more indulgent than plain stockinette stitch seems like it should be.

I liked it so much, that I nearly knit the thing way too long. Luckily, Dan stopped me before it got too out of hand, and I was able to pull back the last five rows in order to stop it at the right place. Want to know how I did that? Just for fun?

I threaded the top onto some waste yarn first, to try it on and mark where I wanted the ending border to start. That’s really the only thing I changed about the pattern, as it originally has you end with a rolled stockinette border, and I just wasn’t feeling that.

Then, after marking that row, I threaded some waste yarn in a contrasting color through that entire row, making sure to catch each loop of each stitch on the same side.

Then, I pulled out the first waste yarn and let the stitches go live, and unzipped them all the way down to the second line.

And the waste yarn conveniently caught the stitches and had them lined up exactly right for me to thread them back onto my needle to finish the border, which I just did in garter stitch, to help it lay flat.

Flat-ish anyway. Pinning out silk is very unforgiving, but it sprung right back to the right shape after I wore it a few times.

Which I couldn’t stop doing.

Those eagle-eyed among you will probably notice a giant stripe going across the bottom of the bust line. Here, it’s way clearer here, if you want to see it.

No, I did not make a dye lot mistake, but I did break one cardinal rule of knitting with “washed” or “distressed” yarns, and that was in working from only one ball at a time. Both the yarn and that pattern recommend that you work from two balls at the same time, alternating every one or two rows as appropriate, to accommodate for the fact that the balls can often differ wildly from each other, even in the same dye lot. I, in my immense hubris, put all of the balls next to each other and said, “No, these all look exactly the same, and I don’t feel like switching off while knitting lace, so I’m not going to do it at all.”

And now I have that giant stripe to show for it. I did eventually start doing it correctly, which is why there are no other stripes visible, and I could have definitely just done the lace normally and then switched when it switched to stockinette, but that would have made too much sense. Instead, I will wear my mistake proudly.

Besides, it just gives me an excuse to make one in every single other color, right? Right.

Honeycomb Socks

Let’s talk about my cousin Amanda.

Amanda and I worked together at Barnes and Noble back in the day, me in the Kids’ Department and her in the Cafe, and we hit it off right away when we met. She’s just a delightful soul — kind and compassionate, inquisitive, creative. It got even better when she surprised me one day to tell me that she figured out that we were related.

I know, right? Not by blood, but through marriage. She was hanging out at her aunt’s house and she saw a framed picture of me, when I was also hanging out with my aunt and the rest of my family. Turns out that her Aunt Linda is also my Aunt Linda, although my relationship with Aunt Linda is that she’s married to my mom’s brother, my Uncle Bobby, and hers is that she’s her mother’s sister. Or father’s? I don’t even know anymore.

Confused? Too bad.

I was so stoked. It’s a great feeling knowing that someone that you like so much is a part of your family, even though you spent so much time not knowing that they were. Maybe it even makes it better somehow. A little surprise just for you.

Anyway, since then, she’s started selling her amazing art online (seriously, go look at her Etsy shop, it’s awesome) and making these wonderfully over-sized slouchy crochet hats that look adorable on everyone. I pretty much want one of everything on both pages, you guys. Such good stuff.

She’s a girl who deserves a pair of socks, yes? Especially since she sent me one of her wonderful prints because I admired it so much? I mean, look at that awesome cicada up there on my peg board.

LOOK. It’s stunning. Go buy one here. You know you want one.

Absolutely she deserves a pair of socks. She requested something with blues, purples, and oranges, and I think this skein hit it so hard on the money that it’s almost like it was handmade just for her.

This beauty is Alexandra the Art of Yarn Black Butte in Kaleidoscope. (That seems like such a nonsense sentence.) This is a very fine fingering weight yarn, made from superwash merino, silk, and yak fiber (yak!), perfect for socks and fancy shawls. It is so soft and silky, and the merino helps for it to show off stitch definition beautifully.

Speaking of, I knew that I wanted to pitch Amanda some insect-related or gothic geometry type stuff, since it’s definitely part of her art style. I sent her a few patterns, and she picked out this one, Honeycomb Socks by M. Testerman of Studio North.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it, knitting full-sized socks for a grown adult with such tiny yarn can be a bit…soul sucking. This yarn is a lot more fine than traditional sock yarn, meaning that I was knitting with size 1.5 needles (2.5mm) rather than my standard size 2 (2.75mm). That quarter of a millimeter may not seem like much, but it makes a huge difference. I can usually, if I’m really cranking it out, make a pair of socks in a week, or a week and a half if I’m going normal speed. These ones took me 3 weeks, mostly because I just kept having to take breaks, for my eyesight and for my sanity.

Not that it wasn’t completely worth it. Part of what makes this honeycomb pattern so gorgeous is that every 8 rows, you have a row where you do one-stitch travelling cables on every single stitch. It makes for a really lovely undulating and subtle stitch pattern that catches the light wonderfully.

But it can also drive you a little crazy. After the first few go-rounds, when I was doing the cables the traditional way with a cable needle, I was thinking that there was no way I was ever going to make it. The clanking cable needle on the teeny tiny yarn was just making me completely unhinged.

Then, I forced myself to look up some tutorials on how to cable without a cable needle, and that made things so much easier. (Here’s the one that I found most helpful, from the lovely ladies at MDK.) Even though I was dropping live stitches off of my needle, and I kept crossing the wrong way when I got to the end of needle almost every dang time, I was finally in the groove.

And the final product? I just couldn’t stop staring at them.

It was hard to part with them, but I knew that they were meant for someone much more deserving of their splendor. So I sent these off today with tons of love to Amanda.

Because if handknit socks aren’t love, I don’t know what is.

Stabbing and Boiling the Scotland Silk Felt Scarf

And now for something completely different.

In the interim between knitting a boatload of socks and the world attempting to right itself, Dan and I decided to take on a little project where we changed over one of our empty rooms (previously masquerading as a guest room but unfortunately serving as a lazy storage room) into a craft room. Pictures of that process later, I promise, as I am beyond elated at how it turned out.

As a part of that process, I made myself go through my knitting books and my yarn and tool stash to give away things I didn’t use anymore and to organize things better. During that process, I found this.

Back when I lived in Colorado, I used to work at a yarn store with some truly amazing coworkers and a horrible monster as a boss. (That fact is unrelated, but I just felt the need to reiterate just how awful of a person she was.) While I was there, we had a really interesting day when a representative from Skacel Yarns, of Addi Needle fame, came and demonstrated their new (at the time) product called Artfelt. It was a system for needle/machine felting that included some really vibrantly-dyed pencil and standard roving, which is normally used to spin yarn. However, with this special sort of paper, kind of similar to dryer sheets, you could needle-felt your own designs, and shrink them in the dryer, ending up with thin, delicate sheets of felted wool fabric that you could drape or sew with, rather than the big bulky felt purses and bags that were popular at the time.  Like Shrinky Dinks for yarn!

I helped the instructor demo the project and really enjoyed myself, so I made sure that I bought a kit. And then, in true crafty-person fashion, I stuffed it in a basket and forgot about it for 12-ish years.

This age became very apparent when I tried to take the directions out and they ended up being permanently fused to the plastic kit bag, due to multiple housing moves and now nearly 10 years in New Orleans humidity.

I was determined to take this horrible continuing pandemic and hurricane-filled month of August and make this damn thing, so I pieced together what I could and went with it.

There, much better.

The kit that I had was called the Silk Scarf Kit, in the colorway Scotland. Of course, this kit no longer seems to be available on the Skacel Artfelt website, but if you wanted to put together something similar, they still seem to have all of the elements available. You’d just need the Artfelt paper, felting needles, the tack board (or any kind of protective squishy surface), any kind of ribbon you want (the actual skein is pictured below), and the multicolored standard roving and pencil roving in the colorway Cobblestone.

Onto the making. First things first, the paper was behaving as though it had been crumpled up in a tube for 12 years (funny, that), so it needed a day to flatten out.

After the paper was behaving properly, I marked out 1.5″ intervals until I got to 72″ long and drew out straight lines at the marks, copying them later with permanent marker because they get very difficult to see once there’s a bunch of wool on top of them.

Then, I had to cut 96 pieces of pencil roving 10″ long. I ended up doing a few more than that because I wanted a bunch of color variation throughout the whole thing, and you end up with plenty of pencil roving left over.

Then, you lay out those pencil roving strips onto the lines you created, place the whole thing on the tack board (or any kind of thick piece of foam, felt, or towel so that you don’t stab yourself or your floor because felting needles are the sharpest things on the planet), and stab it repeatedly.

Just so much stabbing.

Really, you are just trying to get the wool to stay in place on the paper. If you can lift the paper and the wool roving stays put, you’re good, so no need to overstab.

After all of that stabbing is done, you get to mess around with this beautiful stuff.  Seta-Moda is a 100% silk ribbon with gorgeous shine and saturated colors.

Really, you can use any ribbon or accent yarn that you want, just as long as it doesn’t have wool in it, so it won’t felt together and blend into the background.

I cut 11 long strips of the silk, and laid 6 of them across the top of the work, pinned in place on the tack board so that they wouldn’t slide around too much.

Now here comes the meat of the scarf. (Gross.) You take your standard roving and pull it apart, giving yourself light and transparent handfuls of wool.

Then, you sort of…paint with it, covering the lines with broad swathes of color.

After that, you add the remaining 5 pieces of silk in the same manner, in-between the ones you did before so they aren’t right on top of each other.

Then, you put pencil roving pieces down right exactly on top of the previous row, and the stabbing begins again!

It’s kind of hard to see here, but those little tufts poking through the back of the paper are the result of the stabbings, keeping the whole thing together on the paper. When you pull it off of the tack board, it also makes this extremely delightful soft and sticky sound that made my ASMR-loving self super happy.

Part of the goal is to keep the entire thing covered with wool, but still transparent enough to see all of the layers underneath, because you do not want to stab the silk ribbons in all of your stabbing adventures.

I definitely got better at this as I went along, as it took some practice.

Unfortunately, as soon as I felt like I knew what I was doing, it was all done.

All of that make sense? Great. Now comes the really wild stuff.

After the stabbings are complete, you throw the whole thing in the bathtub and wet it thoroughly. It needs to be saturated.

Then, you lay it out on this giant piece of plastic that comes with the paper…

…you roll it up into a strange wool-silk-dryer sheet-plastic hot dog…

…you shove it into an old pair of stockings or leggings (bright turquoise is best, of course), and then you put it by itself into a pre-heated dryer.

Mine clanged around in there for nearly 30 minutes until this came out.

Looking slightly smaller, wrinklier, and…feltier? You basically just want it to felt enough to make sure that the layers are stuck to each other, not dense enough to get something that feels like a hockey puck.

The instructions said that if it was done correctly, the paper would be wrinkled in the back, so I think we were perfect.

Now for the boiling. You’d think that after I complained so much about my fingers hurting after making all of those socks, I’d be less inclined to do a project that exclusively involves fingertip-mangling sharp needles and boiling water. Nope.

You boil a whole bunch of water and then try to transfer it to your bathroom without giving yourself 3rd degree burns.

Then, you pour it all over the scarf, paper-side up I assumed, and the magic Artfelt paper magically dissolves away. It was actually pretty cool.

I did end up with a few leftover bits, so I needed to hit it again strategically with the boiling water, but otherwise it went pretty smoothly.

Then, I squeezed out all of the water and gave it a very quick once-over with an iron on low heat, just to make sure everything was sticking down properly.

And here she is.

And I am underwhelmed.

It really is very cool that you can get such a delicate, thin woolen fabric using this technique, as it drapes very nicely and feels very soft.

However, I feel like the colors that were so rich and vibrant, in both the silk and the wool, are now sort of flat and dull in their felted state. And the wrinkling?

After seeing how lovely it was in its pre-felted state, the wrinkling just detracts so much from the original geometric pattern. Why on earth did I need to be so careful and exact with my lines and my stabbings if it was just going to wiggle out of shape as it shrank?

Nevertheless, it was really fun to make and it was wonderful learning a new technique (that I might never do again, but oh well), plus the colors do look nice even though they are a shadow of their former selves. I’m not sure if I should keep this for myself or if I should give it to my mom or some other other older-type lady who might really love it.

I’m torn. But at least I got to spend a good chunk of time where I wasn’t alone with my thoughts of this broken world, which was a plus.

Stay tuned for another long-overdue project completion, coming soon.

Sockpocalypse Summer, part 7 – Mirkwood Socks

You would not believe how many sock patterns are named after characters and locations from Lord of the Rings. In searching for patterns for this past project and other socks, I found Bombadil socks, Rivendell socks, Faramir socks, Treebeard socks…and so many more that I can’t even hope to list them all here. However, the simplest and loveliest of all of them were these.

Rebecca Wilder‘s Mirkwood Socks.

Although I am a proven die-hard fan of Knit Picks sock yarns (which I have been working with a lot during this project), my yarn snob side was starting to get antsy to work with something a little more…special.

My friend Adrienne, as part of my self-imposed Sockpocalypse Summer, chose this exquisite skein of Mountain Colors Crazyfoot in Harmony Lake for her custom pair. When I saw the pattern’s simple mirror-image cable design, I knew the combo of yarn and pattern would be absolutely perfect. Mountain Colors is often some pricey stuff, but the deep color saturation and inventive colorways make for one-of-a-kind long-lasting garments.

Crazyfoot is a tightly-spun multi-ply that’s mostly superwash wool, which provides for unmatched stitch definition, often causing me to step back and just gaze adoringly at long expanses of plain stockinette stitch.

Speaking of plain stockinette stitch, there was one point where I deviated from the pattern as written, just to take advantage of that precise stitch definition and to not detract from the simple, elegant cable. I did the heel flaps as plain stockinette, slipping one stitch at the start of each row to help with picking up the gusset, rather than the published garter stitch or eye of partridge options.

It just felt like this created a more streamlined, smoother appearance, which would call more attention to the mirror-image construction than the nuts and bots of sock pattern writing.

However, this project wasn’t without its own tiny drama, although not as dramatic as last time.

As I was humming along on the second sock, I got nearly all three 18-row repeats into the “leg” portion and suddenly had a horrible realization. There was no row 15.

I went back and looked at the directions for the right sock, and yes, there was a row 15. But no row 15 on the left sock. So…my brain exploded as a I realized I’d been knitting each cable pass 1 row shorter than the previous sock, resulting in a sock that was three rows shorter overall and cables that visibly (at least to me) didn’t match. There was absolutely no way that my brain was going to let that slide.

So, I ripped out nearly the entire thing and counted back to start over the whole section, now with row 15 intact. I sent a message to the designer through Ravelry, and she was very gracious about it, so hopefully it gets fixed soon. I just couldn’t have lived with myself knowing that the other sock wasn’t a perfect match.

And just look at how beautiful those cables are in the Crazyfoot. So simple, but so elegant.

We’re in the home stretch now, as I just cast on for the third-to-last pair of Sockpocalypse Socks on Saturday. There might be a bit of a delay as I study up for my NP certification test next week and attempt to not panic every single day. We’ll see how that goes.

Knitting Through – the Stacy Pullover

At the start of the new year, I realized that it had been 10 (ten!) years since I had last knitted a full-body garment for myself. Sure, I had made approximately eighty million hats and pairs of socks, but nothing to cover the top half of me since we moved from Boulder.

I’ll be honest, part of this is because I am not such a huge fan of the top half of my body. I am a big girl with short legs and broad shoulders, not exactly the ideal for the body-hugging fabric that knitting produces. Knitting smaller things for myself was always more acceptable because I didn’t have to take a bust or waist measurement to make them.

At the start of 2020, before the madness began, I said to myself, screw that. It’s the last semester of school, you’re coasting right to the finish line. You need a simple stress reliever project that you can feel good about! You scored a decent amount of this lovely worsted yarn during a clearance sale that is begging to become something lovely. You’ve got this!

Well, I was right about the yarn, and wrong about pretty much everything else.

My last semester of DNP school turned out to be anything but a coast to the finish line. I got a whole new faculty chair, who had a whole lot of things to say about my project that forced me to do a crazy amount of work in a short amount of time. The pandemic shut down school, shut down clinicals, and shut down our DNP project defense presentations. Instead, we did everything online, and I tried to boil down years of crazy hard work into a 25 minute slideshow where I talked way too fast but miraculously passed.

I didn’t get to finish clinicals or get a graduation. I got an award, but my family didn’t get to see me receive it. I rarely get to work at all, because my PRN status means that I get cancelled a lot to save money for the hospital. I gained even more weight because of…well because of everything. I tried to stay calm and bake and try to cook new things and knit, but inside I’m a simmering pot of anxiety. Never have I ever felt that I have less to be proud of, even though my brain knows better.

However, through it all, I made this sweater.

This sweater kept me looking forward.

This sweater gave me concrete goals.

This sweater made me really care about matching up the gradient on the sleeves, and then matching it to the front panels, which is no small feat, I must say.

This sweater made me happy when nothing else could, and I am thankful that the person I was in January gave me the gift of being able to finish it now.

Now, enough mushiness, let’s hear about the knitting!

The yarn is Cascade Tangier in the sadly discontinued colorway Lakeside. It’s a very strange blend of silk, acrylic, rayon, and cotton that resembles a slubby wool blend like Noro Kureyon, but with better stitch definition and a smoother drape. Some of the rayon sheds while you’re working with it and mine inexplicably had some random tiny bits of gold sparkly stuff in it, but otherwise it was very nice to work with.

The pattern is the Stacy Pullover from Big Girl Knits, designed by Terri Shea.

I have owned this book for so long and never knit anything out of it. Not sure why, as it is the perfect book for analyzing the fundamentals of knitted objects and how to make them work best for your body. Every pattern is labelled with the body feature that it is best suited for, plus there are a ton of helpful notes on how to modify things to your specific tastes.

The Stacy Pullover is specifically designed for people with a lot of boobs and butt to spare, so there was very little I needed to do to make it work for me. The only modification that I made was giving the ribbing an extra two inches, as I can’t stand it when sweaters are too short.

I didn’t even try to match striping on the front and back, because nobody has that kind of time and gradient yarns always manage to have knots in inopportune areas. However, I knit both of the sleeves at the same time, and made sure to make those match each other and line up with the armscye from the front, just to keep it from looking like too much of a circus.

I’m in love with the detached keyhole neck detail as well. That, combined with the fact that the transition from honeycomb to ribbing makes it look like a tailored waist, man that’s some good stuff.

As soon as the world calms down and the weather drops below 80 degrees everyday, this sweater will be joining me frequently, reminding me that I have something to be proud of despite all of the insanity. I have a doctorate. And I have a sweater. It’s all going to be okay.

Catch-Up Time: Night Sky Saurey

For our next catch-up post, we have a real labor of love.

Not that it was a difficult thing to make at all, but it was a project infused with love from the start.

You remember my lovely friend Kelli?

Of course, you do! She is a glorious ray of sunshine in my life, and when she told me that she and her husband Taylor were having a baby, I immediately got to work finding the perfect baby blanket pattern for her. After finishing up a happy dance around the kitchen, of course.

Kelli is a very stylish lady. She effortlessly surrounds herself with handpicked items that suit her perfectly, without ever looking too very. She taught herself calligraphy, and it is always a treat getting hand-addressed letters and cards from her in the mail. She loves the handmade and the one-of-a-kind, making her the ideal person to grace with a truly loving handknit project.

I’m pretty sure it was only a few days (maybe even the next day?) when I starting prying her for details about her perfect baby blanket. Cables? Stripes? Intarsia?

Lace? Bingo. Introducing our Night Sky Saurey.

Kelli and Taylor weren’t going to find out the gender of the baby ahead of time, and she had already decided on a “night sky” theme for the nursery, so something lacy and reminiscent of the starry, inky night sky was just perfect.

She picked out the pattern herself, from a curated selection from me, and specified that she wanted it in navy blue.

The pattern? Saurey from Berroco, made in Berroco Modern Cotton. The color Goddard was just the perfect shade, somewhere between navy and royal blue, to evoke those sleepy nighttime nursery vibes.

Now, I am apparently not the only person who thought that it was just perfect, because it was on back-order from every single online store I could find, for at least 2 months. However, patience won the day, and I ended up with 3 skeins of this beautiful stuff with 2 months to spare to knit the thing.

And let’s talk about this yarn for a second. Kelli specifically wanted cotton, something that would be able to be washed and beat up a little bit and not get too hot, because regardless of the season, we do live in Louisiana where the weather is trying to murder us at all times. Modern Cotton is a pima cotton and modal blend, meaning that it’s super soft and pliable, not hard and unforgiving like a lot of other cotton yarns, but still very resilient.

It’s got great stitch definition, even when knit up a little bit loosely, like is required for this pattern. It’s also got a wee bit of a sheen, and when combined with the lace yarnovers and the tiny spaces between the stitches, it makes it look like it’s shimmering when it moves.

I mean, could there have been a more perfect blanket for a night sky theme? Or a friend more deserving? I don’t think so.

Only two more installments of catch-up posts! More baby stuff, plus something I’ve never done before! Exciting!

Warm Feet = Love

A few years ago, my best friend since high school, Jonathan, and his lovely wonderful wife, Rebecca, moved from New Orleans out to beautiful San Rafael, CA.

I miss them all the time.

Ever since visiting them in the middle of summer last year, I am also concerned about the state of their feet. The entire San Francisco area is ridiculously cold at night, no matter what time of year, and I knew that this had to be remedied with some precious handknit socks, post-haste.

I happened to have a gorgeous skein of Mrs. Crosby Loves to Play Satchel hanging around, an impulse purchase made during a huge sale at my favorite LYS, McNeedles. This weirdly-named yarn is one of my all-time favorite sock yarns, supersoft with gorgeous color saturation and a lovely single-ply twist that manages to still yield some great stitch definition with a soft fuzzy halo around it. This colorway, Peacock, is just absolutely stunning, and Jonathan and I felt like it was perfect for Rebecca.

The pattern is the Cookie A. classic, Monkey. I’ve been wanting to make these since the first time I saw them in Knitty, 12 years ago, and I finally got to add them to my Cookie A. oeuvre.

Seriously, I have made a lot of Cookie A. socks. Look through the archives, if you don’t believe me, because it’s just now the end of the semester of my second year of grad school, and I just can’t muster up the energy to look them all up and link them here for you. But trust me, there’s a bunch.

There’s nothing overly twee or clever about these, just a really good, classic sock pattern, with a little bit of lace and mock-cables to keep things interesting.

They are so incredibly soft and plush. The perfect thing to keep this wonderful woman’s toes warm this winter.

The only thing that I might change, if I were to make these socks in the future, is to try them with a yarn that’s maybe more tightly-spun or smoother, because even though the halo of Satchel is glorious, it does obscure the more subtle bits of the patterning. I’d love to see what it might look like in something more defined.

As for Jonathan…well, it would just be really mean to make beautiful, warm socks for his wife and not make him anything at all. Too rude to even think of.

How freaking cool is it that I somehow have pictures of both of these people that coordinate somehow with their new socks? Uncanny. (You’d almost think that I did it on purpose, but I didn’t. I swear. I’m just good at picking out sock yarns, I think.  We all have our talents.)

I’ve had this skein of Berroco Sox in my stash for years, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to use it. You don’t just jump into a self-striping sock without having the perfect pattern and perfect person to use it for. This colorway, the tragically-discontinued Lancaster, was an utter joy.

I mean, that’s a lot of pictures of the same thing over and over, but I don’t know how else to reveal those little flecks of soft browns, purples, pinks, and grays throughout the whole thing. The pattern is my old stand-by, perfect for showcasing crazy stripes and colorfades, the Good, Plain Sock Recipe by the Yarn Harlot.

Just a standard 3×3 rib pattern to show off all those tweedy stripes. Such good stuff. It’s hard to not feel like an aspiring Ivy League professor trudging through the fall leaves while you’re wearing these.

These beauties got packed up and sent on their way to California, where they are doing their important job of keeping the toes warm of the people that I love.

That’s what true love is, right? Keeping your loved ones warm, any way you can, even from across the country? I think so.