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We've all heard the phrase "if the shoe fits" and "wearing many different hats." Well, this week my life has a little bit of both.
Luckily, it's not shoes, but socks, and these socks fit admirably and they even match! These are the conference socks made with Regia (details at Ravelry link) that I knit in Chicago and in California, finished a couple of weeks ago and finally photographed. I love that I was able to keep the stripes aligned! This took some doing, unfortunately, in that about halfway through the second ball, there was a knot, and after the knot, the pattern started going backwards. Yes, backwards. So I had to wind down to the end of the ball and re-wind it from the outside in in order to get the colors to stick together. This happened somewhere on the middle of the foot of the second sock. As you can see, it all ended up just fine! Slightly more scary of course are the hats I need to wear. This hat, for example, is scary just because of its sheer size - its unintended sheer size. Here is Gretel, and it's not half-done yet and it already envelops my face! Clearly at this point I started thinking about making a felted cabled beret, not just a cabled beret! I also started wondering if this was one hat I just couldn't wear, one that was just too, too big. There's another really big hat I'm desperately fit my head into (or around, as the case may be), and that's an on-campus interview!!! It's a rural SLAC (that's "small liberal arts college") in Pennsylvania, given that I'm not yet finished with my PhD, I'm really honored to have been asked to campus. Regardless of what happens with the job, this will be an excellent, if nerve-wracking, experience to have. So, while I've been working on a hat that's just plain too big, I've been preparing for my interview. The toughest part to prepare is my sample class. Can you believe it, I've gotten through graduate school without having to plan my own class from the ground up? I've only been a teaching assistant, meaning that I've led entire classes on material other people (the professors) have picked out. So I have to give a sample class on a topic from the survey course they'd want me to teach. I need to create something that's engaging, that demonstrates my very-much still-evolving teaching style, that fosters discussion and also reveals how do at speaking for a longer amount of time (so, a very very short lecture), and that requires absolutely no advance preparation on the part of the students. A big hat to put on, indeed. The Gretel hat, certainly, came out too big. Way too big. This is not a tam, nor a beret -- as Coffeeboy said, it looks like I'm wearing an orthodox Jewish woman's headcovering. I thought perhaps I needed to grow a lot more hair and shape it into dreds or braids to fit the hat around, but either way, this is no tam. I can only hope that the hat of aspiring scholar, teacher and professor fits a little better... but first, we need to felt this fiber and see if it's destined to be a nice felted tam, a cozy cat bed, or something else entirely!
The conference went well; Coffeeboy's interviews went particularly well, as evidenced by the two campus interviews he's already secured! My interview went, so far as I could tell, as well as could be expected for a first-time interviewee, so we will see what happens. I don't expect to hear from the school I interviewed with for at least two weeks, so I need to hang on and be patient.
The conference itself was - get this - right across the street from Grant Park, site of Obama's recent victory speech and screaming crowds. When we left the hotel Tuesday morning -- the very same hotel Obama would later await the results -- workers were hanging red, white, and blue flags around the hotel; red, white and blue lamps created bright streaks of color on the hotel's facade, and security guards and police cars already waited across the street at the park.
Later that evening, after we'd spent most of the day on the airplane, we arrived home in time to watch the first results come in. As the conclusion came ever closer to a victory for Obama, we had a sudden feeling of regret that we hadn't stayed right there in Chicago one more day, just so we could say that we were there when the nation elected its first African-American president. But no matter, we were home, and at least among the humans, no eye was dry, and even if we weren't there ourselves, our hearts most certainly were, and are.
At the conference, while flying, and while hanging out with friends and family before the conference, I got a fair amount of knitting done, as you can see! The colors of the Regia sock really caught my attention, and I even completed one whole sock in the course of the 5-odd days we were away! Since I've been home, I've been getting back into the spinning. I have a lot of longwools to show you, some Corriedale and some Colonial wool (which I gather is pretty similar to Corriedale?) that I've either just finished recently, or have been waiting for the right time to post.
This weekend, I'm hoping to get more sock knitting done, as Coffeeboy and I drive north to Virginia Beach for a family reunion. I have a wild dream of getting some work done while we're away, but I'm not sure it'll happen.
Tomorrow, Coffeeboy and I head off to our big annual gathering of scholars of religion. This year we are both interviewing; it's my first time on the market and he's on again after a year off. He has lots of interview (count 'em, five!) and I have one. I'm really really proud of my sweetie for netting so many interviews! My interview is at a school I'm interested in, plus I'm still ABD, so I'm not terribly surprised I only got one. I'm taking some knitting along, a basic sock for Coffeeboy and a plain vanilla sock for myself. No need to stress myself out with difficult knitting.
Coffeeboy's sock #1
This week, when I haven't been prepping and researching for my interview, I spent time thinking about fiber. Last year's SAFF got me all excited about spinning; this year I got very excited about bettering my spinning, and took too few classes in that regard, so I've been reading Ravelry spinning forums and perusing some of the books on my shelves. I think I got myself thoroughly confused over whether I'm a right- or left-handed spinner; I write with my left hand, but I apparently spin right-handed (with my left in front and my right hand in back). I also decided to try the fast flyer on my Lendrum, for the first time since getting it a year ago, and wow! What a difference! It's really fun to use. I love treadling slowly but getting such a fine yarn. Maybe I'll be able to spin 3-ply sock yarn after all.
In making these explorations, I did try several new things at once, never a good idea: a new flyer, different hand positions, and merino fiber, which I haven't spun all that much of yet. It seems to have gone well though. I've been playing around with some plain white fiber and have spun a first layer onto two bobbins, mostly because I felt the need to spin in order to relax the interview nerves.
After this conference, I can get into my next goals for spinning, which are to explore this new flyer more, and to try out different types of fiber. As I think I hinted before, I bought a whole lotta different fiber at SAFF, and a measly amount of sock yarn, comparatively speaking: 
 For the fiber, there's merino, merino-silk blends, alpaca, alpaca-wool blends, mohair and blends - not all of it is in that picture; some of it Coffeboy has, um, stashed away for all the various events of December (birthday and holidays). I tried to go for a range of multicolored and more solid-colored fiber, too, but gave myself free range to indulge the blues. That big giant bag is about 30 oz. of fiber, hopefully way more than enough to make a sweater for Coffeeboy (I decided to err on the generous side). I might have chosen badly; the color looked so perfect for him but the fiber was made up of "little bits" rather than anything more official or "nice." It felt nice, though, and like it would draft well, so I decided to go for it. We shall see.
The sock yarn includes two skeins from Miss Babs, and one in "Sea Silk" from the Sanguine Gryphon - yum!
Since I have to get up in a few hours to make it to the airport, though, I'm going to have to leave this post with that oh-so-tantalizing image of fiber fun to come. Wish me luck with the interview, Coffeeboy too, and all our friends who also have interviews!
Hi everyone - everyone who hasn't dropped me off bloglines, that is! I am still alive, believe it or not! I've just been away from the blog, mentally speaking, and from blog-world too. Since I last posted, I: - made a quick run to visit a friend who lives a few hours away and has access to some really old books that I need in the dissertation. She wrote about my visit way back when. (I was tempted to link to her blog to say, "Look what I've been up to!" and that's when I lost my blogging mojo...)
- a week later I found myself in New York City, surrounded by big tall buildings, for a week of research and crashing in a hotel room with a relative. I got so busy with family, research, and seeing the city that I forgot to check out yarn stores. I did see Spamalot, though, and I laughed a lot; I did get to go to bookstores, which are sadly in short supply where I live
- then I had a week off from travel, except I got off a wait list for a retreat
- and I went on the retreat March 14-16, which wasn't quite what I was looking for but was probably a productive time anyways
- Now I have a couple weeks off from travel before I head to my home institution and a conference I've spent the last year planning...
So it's not as if I haven't been busy! I've just been focusing my free time on things that don't translate well to a fiber arts blog! I also feel like what I've been working on in the knitting world hasn't been terribly interesting, in that it doesn't merit more than a "show and tell" type post. I'm not sure, right now, how to make the blog more than a show-and-tell, without making what it's not meant to be. Maybe when I finish the prototype of a shawl I'm trying to come up with, then I'll have something more fiber-related to talk about. But for now, I don't know if I'm going to come out of this internet-hibernation, or remain in it?
Regardless, there's still fiber. I finished the long-suffering socks for my MIL, and have been spinning some pretty, baby-blue, tweedy corriedale from Greta_Jane. I have three 4 oz. balls of the stuff, and I'm spinning it fairly thin. I'm about halfway through the fiber; I have still another ball to go. One of these days I'll get to try three-ply! Or the gorgeous merino-tencel I bought while in Carrboro a few weeks ago! Coffeeboy and I also have been hiking, looking for signs of spring and finding beautiful scenery nonetheless. In that picture on the right, what you see are the evergreens of the North Carolina mountains - pines, rhododendrons aplenty, and mountain laurel.
I hope all of you are well! I do stop by many of your blogs from time to time, but truth be told, I haven't been reading blogs all that much of late, either. (There's been a fair amount of book-reading, as in, books that are not related to the dissertation, and that cuts into the knitting time, too!) I hope wherever you are, you are having a beautiful spring!
May yours be as warm as, well, a handknit sock resting uneasily close to the jaws of a kitty:
Coffeeboy thought that Juniper would make an ideal background for the sock. Juniper thought the sock - and my handspun yarn nicely wound into a yarn cake - would make an ideal lunchtime plaything. Luckily, as the camera indicates, she had plenty of supervision, and no yarn, WIP-socks, or cats were harmed in the making of said photograph. I've been a bit of an MIA-blogger lately. Last week, I visited my academic home back in New Jersey, taking along the handspun sock yarn and turning it into what you see above. I met with friends, advisors, and lots of library books. My trunk was noticeably heavier on the long, 10-hours-plus drive home. I even made it into New York City to visit an archive, always fun after spending a while in the small-town mountains! I find it interesting how the sock's colors are spinning up. I would never have guessed that it would have a large chunk of red like that, and be so mutedly tweedy elsewhere. The yarn is a pleasure to knit with, though, not only because it feels nice but because I made it all by myself! I decided to reinforce the heels with some mohair, or rather, with some Kidsilk Haze, to be precise. Believe you me, my heels cannot wait to slip into that softness! Well, regardless of whether or not you celebrate this commercially-induced festival of sugary-sweetness, I do hope you get to feel a bit of the fiber-love either way!
Remember how I said I'd made sock yarn? Well now I have pictures! I'm pretty tempted to let the pictures express how very, very excited I am to have made fingering weight yarn that's enough for socks!!
The Fiber:  4 oz. BFL fiber from The Painted Sheep, in the Dublin Bay colorway
The Fiber, unfurled  I divided this in half lengthwise, and then for half A I split it again, for half B I split it lengthwise four times, following a trick I saw on Ravelry about making space-dyed roving into barberpole-striped yarn.
(Click to make any of these bigger in Flickr!!)
Spinning the fiber: 
All plied up, it overflows from this bobbin said to hold 4 ounces: 
What it looks like washed and dried:   All bundled up as a pretty little skein:   What we have here is 380 yards, 4 oz., fingering weight. It's not superwash, but it sure sounds like sock yarn to me! I think I'm in love. I'm half tempted to pull out the sock needles right now and cast on to watch this yarn make socks! The other half wants to stare at it, squeeze and pat it. It's soft. It's squishy. It's enough for socks. I'm a happy, happy spinner. I think I'll hang onto it a bit before turning this FO back into a WIP. As we close this week and come to the weekend, I only hope you find something fibery that makes you quite this happy!
I've been having a problem with socks lately. Specifically, socks using those hand-painted yarns I often love so much. I mean, just take a look at this one.
This one, folks, is supposed to have a pattern. A pretty pattern called "Laburnum." (It's in the Sensational Knitted Socks book, a 5-stitch pattern). You can see some examples over there at Flickr. But my sock, it does not have a pattern. Hence, it's been frogged. Or there's this one, Cascading Leaves. Again, check these out. See those nice little leaves? Now look at this:
Ugh, right? OK, it's not that bad, but it is a little bit, well, blotchy. I haven't quite frogged this one, but I'm tempted. In desperation, I pulled out some Koigu last night, a nice, reliable handpaint. A colorway, I should add, that hadn't worked well with a pattern involving cables and lace. You'd think I'd have pulled out a nice, and definitely reliable solid color. But no, I decided I wanted to try this particular yarn. After all, it's blue and white and makes me think of winter sunsets. After a bit of poking around on Ravelry, I thought that the Hedera pattern might have just the right amount of interest, but I wasn't so sure about the whole handpainted business. I gave it a shot last night. This is what I found:
I like it. In fact, I really like it. Color me surprised, hand-paint me amazed! I think what you see there must be my personal record for the most sock knit in one evening yet! Thank goodness, my sock love hasn't, as I had feared, quite left me yet.
Hey guess what everyone! It worked! I knit something with yarn that I spun!
Remember this bit of overspun, blue tweediness?
Well, with it I made a hat!!
Pattern: Tweed Beret from Interweave Knits Winter 2006 Yarn: My Own Handspun!! Needles: Size 7 in DPNs and various circulars Time: About a week The overspun tweediness of the yarn ended up working out really well for the pattern. I also had the perfect amount of yarn: just a tiny, smaller-than-a-ping-pong ball's worth at the end. I was surprised; I'd thought I'd have too little yarn, but no, it was all fine! It was a big tough on my hands: very little stretch to the yarn and therefore not the nicest to knit with. I also could have made the hat a bit floppier. It's pretty thick yarn, and was nice and toasty when Coffeeboy took this picture yesterday during a snowfall. Overall, though, I really like how it came out and am terribly excited that my yarn actually "worked"! I have another FO that I've been forgetting to post: Coffeeboy's socks. I finished these while we were in Colorado, a few days before New Year's - the last FO of 2007.
Pattern: Retro Rib socks from Interweave's book Favorite Socks Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Pioneer, 2 skeins Needles: size 1, magic-looped Time: Nov. 2007-Dec. 2007 I really enjoyed this pattern; the socks were easy to knit and the ribbing controlled some of the pooling of the yarn. Coffeeboy seems to like them too! I "gave" him the yarn as a graduation present, with the promise that they'd become socks, and I finally have kept that promise! I've been spinning a lot lately, as you might have seen in that last post. For the past almost 2 weeks I've been spinning 8 oz. of red, "warm wine" yarn. It's amazing how much longer it takes when I'm really trying to do things right and spin more even, consistent singles! Last night I plied it onto 2 bobbins; today I need to take that off the bobbins and finish plying the yarn, probably a bobbin and a half. Then I will have a spinning FO to show you, too!
While I've been spinning, I've also done a bit of sock-knitting lately.
See? We have these Retro Rib socks, coming along nicely.
And also this oddball here, the Cascading Leaves sock by Jeanne Townsend of the Yahoo knitalong group: I'm using Great Adirondack Yarn in their wool/silk/nylon blend, and it feels heavenly! The colors are knitting up a bit odd, but everyone I've asked says they kind of like it. I kind of like it, too, but I also kind of think it's an odd fit between pattern and yarn. I have one other pair of socks, but I didn't take their picture, as they are currently suffering from "procrastinating on kitchener stitch syndrome," poor things. It's been a couple of weeks they've had that particular issue; maybe I'd better put them out of their misery soon. Finally, remember how I finished a sweater recently? Well, I started another one: Cobblestone! I'm using Mission Falls 1824 wool that I bought years ago to make Rogue. Turns out I need a few more balls to make a guy-sized sweater, and goodness knows if I can find the right dyelot anymore! (Yeah, I know. Another dyelot problem? But this one I know about in advance!) I'm thinking of using a different dyelot to do the yoke; that should hide the change in color fairly well). I'm thinking of bringing Cobblestone to the conference this weekend (the American Academy of Religion, meeting in sunny San Diego this year), in order to get through the many inches of relatively brainless knitting I have ahead of me. It's still small enough where it might make sense, at least for a little while, to have it with me. ... Speaking of conferences, I made a little mistake yesterday: I sent an email yesterday to a whole bunch of major scholars in my subfield about logistics for a conference, and I've just now seen that it had a couple of typos. I checked carefully to make sure the dates and times and logistical details about travel were correct, but not that I'd spelled the title of the conference right! Oops! Earlier I was quite worried about this but now I feel a little less anxious. No less embarrassed, but less like hiding is necessary!
Recently, Greta_Jane has been asking me for commentary on what makes a good match between handpainted yarn and sock pattern. Predictably, whenever I've seen her lately, we've been too busy with everything else to pull out socks and ponder patterns. Not to mention that it wasn't yet sock weather. Now that sock weather and Socktoberfest are here, though, I've been thinking about this question of match between pattern and yarn, and I thought I'd try to pull together a few thoughts on the blog.
Looking at the socks I've knit over the past couple of years, it seems there are a few factors I consider:
1) Plain vanilla stockinette socks
I choose these when the yarn is something special, when I want the colors to carry their own weight, or if I just want an easy sock to travel with. I also tend to choose stockinette when the yardage seems likely to be too short for a complicated pattern (as is often the case with the Jitterbug - the two bright blue socks).
   
2. Socks with ribbings
Ribbing seems to work well since the strong vertical lines counterbalance the horizontal effect of the handpainting. It's also usually easy to memorize, is stretchy, and fits well, all good combinations.
   
3) Things just go together!
Stylistically, this is my favorite option: when the pattern moves in such a way that it itself highlights the changes in the yarn, and the variegation of the yarn emphasizes the movement in the pattern:
   
Some patterns are just too intricate for self-striping. Knitty's Hedera strikes me as one example that really needs a solid-colored (or mostly solid) yarn.
What guidelines do you, readers, follow when pairing sock yarn and sock pattern?
I've been waiting for a day like this. Cool breeze, sunny, blue sky, a few leaves dropping and dancing down from the trees. Fall is really here! This week, we baked acorn squash and stuffed it with a rice/almond/parmesan cheese mixture, and we also baked a pumpkin and chocolate chip cake. They were supposed to be bars, but it came out more like cake - very tasty!
This week I finished one knit, came close to finishing another, and started one more. I couldn't help but take pictures on what turns out to be our new, giant mum, just now showing its color. Here's a new sock, the Mock Cable Wave sock from Favorite Socks. The yarn is Lorna's Laces in the Tuscany colorway - and yes, it's another holiday knit.
The Garter Rib socks have just one portion of a toe to go; I expect I'll finish those later tonight.
And finally, the Irish Hiking Scarf, done minus the blocking and weaving in of ends:
Pattern: Irish Hiking Scarf
Yarn: Rowan Yorkshire Tweed Aran, color #416, 2 balls
Needles: Size 8 (ie, treetrunks!)
Reflections: This was a destash project. If it weren't, I probably wouldn't have chosen such a scratchy yarn! I'm hoping it'll soften up once I block it, closer to the actual holiday season. For now, I have enough yarn left to make a hat-brim, with a coordinating yarn for the body of a hat. One holiday present done, several to go! Ho ho ho!
(By the way, I think I'm in love with that giant, beautiful plant.)
While patience has brought me fall and finished objects, it hasn't brought yarn. All week, I've been assiduously checking The Loopy Ewe, waiting for what they call a "sneak-up."* While a sneak-up came, it didn't bring with it the yarn I've been coveting! So I checked the website even more obsessively. Maybe there'd be another sneak-up? No. Sheri's blog now says that they waited-for yarn will be up the week after next! Since I don't even know whether or not they'll have the desired colorway this time around, I feel a bit silly doing all this waiting. I mean really, just how obsessed can one really get about yarn? ... I'm not actually sure I want that question answered about myself. Because then I'd be even more scared than I already am about this particular obsession!
Tomorrow, Coffeeboy and I are going hiking way up on the Parkway, to see if the leaves a couple thousand feet farther up are turning more than the leaves at 2,200 feet. Either way, I'm sure I'll have pretty pictures to show you for next week!
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*This isn't meant as a criticism of The Loopy Ewe. I've used them before and have been very pleased with their services. I realize (mostly) that yarn store owners have lives outside their stores... but that hasn't stopped me from being obsessed!
Has it really been over two weeks since my last post? Goodness. Time flies when you're having fun and working hard! I might have to resort to a bullet-esque post, a la Sheepish Annie:
Labor Day weekend: Much fun! Greta Jane at Ivory Needles came up for a visit, so Coffeeboy and I showed her the sights. I think she might have planned on a little more knitting time. Instead, we went to an Apple Festival (which didn't have enough apples, IMHO), wine tasting (really not very good wine), eating (The Laughing Seed, again) and listening to music in Asheville, hiking off the Blue Ridge Parkway, blueberry picking, talking, cooking, knitting, etc. Possibly the best part? She found me an excuse to see her AND a ticket to see the Yarn Harlot in Atlanta next week!!
Dissertation proposal: Last week I sent my advisor a 2-page overview. He wrote back saying, essentially, looks good but vast, show me more. So since sometime last week I turned those 2 pages into about 24 pages of actual dissertation proposal. I was aiming for about half that, but the longer version turned out to be the only way I could articulate myself at this point. But yay! I have an actual draft of a dissertation proposal done! This is excellent! Libraries: I am very impressed by the ILL service at Coffeeboy's college. They get things here really quickly, which has proven quite beneficial over the past two weeks. September weather: It's cooling down a bit, more towards the lower temperatures these mountains are known for: low 80s, 70s. I haven't quite felt the first breeze of fall, but it will come, as evidenced by this tree we saw on our recent hike: Knitting: Oh, you mean frogging and floundering and flourishing? Because there's been a little bit of all three these past couple weeks. Remember the shawl with the psychedelic colors? Frogged. I decided (with a little help from Greta Jane)it was just too psychedelic, after all. Instead, I'm looking for the perfect woodsy, earthy combination of blues, browns, and greens. Any suggestions?* The socks? Floundering (well, a little bit). One is done, but another pair has yet to make it onto the needles. But what about flourishing? Well, I decided that a male someone is going to receive a (modified) Irish Hiking Scarf for one of the winter holidays. As you can see, I've been enjoying knitting cables on size 8 needles. Oh, the treetrunks! They fly so fast! Here's one ball of yarn out of two, almost all the way knit! Phew! There you go! I think I'm all caught up, for the moment! --- *I have something rather specific in mind: sky blues to deeper blues, forest greens to sunlit greens, dirty brown to the browns of tree trunks, with maybe the whites of clouds peeking through, dyed in such a way as to look nice knit up into a shawl with a leaf motif.
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