Christmas in April

I’ve fallen a little behind on my Deck the Balls project. (Remember, I pledged to deck a ball with leftover sock yarn every time I finished a sock this year.)  But I can easily catch up.  Here’s a ball made from Green Mountain Spinnery Sock Art Meadow.  The socks are here.  The ball came in less than a month after the socks did, so I’m calling it good.

I improvised a checkerboard pattern on this one.  It is centered between the increases on the bottom of the ball and the decreases on the top of the ball – but it doesn’t fall in the middle of the ball.  I’ll adjust next time if I do this again.

I have one more ball of leftover sock yarn awaiting its ball destiny – then I’ll be caught up.

Look at the grass greening up in our backyard – soon enough it will be time to mow again!

Hedgerow Socks - done

I finished these Hedgerow Socks last week but have not been able to get a decent photo to share.  At first I thought it was because the weather has been so relentlessly gray here and I wasn’t getting enough contrast between the yarn and my background (also gray).  This morning there is a bit of wan late winter sunshine, and I still couldn’t get a great shot.  I touched up the color a bit in Picnik to try to reveal this yarn’s true color, but this is as good as I could get it.  My older stash photo (taken in May sunlight) is probably a better match:

The camera brings out the blue.  There are blue notes here, but the yarn definitely reads as “green.”

For the most part, I like these socks.  However, the yarn is a bit tricky.  It’s a two-ply, which means it’s bumpier than most sock yarn (remember the more plies you add, the more circular your yarn cross section becomes, and the smoother the yarn).  2-ply yarn wants to lock together when it touches.  I understand that weavers prefer 2-ply for exactly this reason.  I could tell the yarn wanted to “lock” while I was knitting it.  I had to pull it quite sternly at times.  Knitting this yarn was harder on my hands than rounder yarn is.

I tried to relax some on the second sock, and as a result, the sock is slightly bigger.  I checked and doublechecked, and I think the stitch/row counts are the same.  But the sock is bigger.  I’m not sure what to do about it.  I may rip back the toe and start it a couple rounds sooner.  I may try to full the sock a bit (no superwash, so it should work – but I should test on a swatch).  I may just give it to someone with bigger feet who can fill it out.

The pattern looked simple but was deceptive, too.

So all in all, this is a project that took more cunning than I expected.

One of the upshots of this project is that I think I should strive to spin a 3-ply sock yarn, which REALLY means I need a smaller whorl.  And I think I should figure out how to spin woolen style (not worsted, which I do now), so that the resulting yarn will be bouncier.

More study and practice needed.  :)

A snowy white day, a dreamy green sock

It started snowing around lunchtime today and continued gently all day.  It’s supposed to come down a lot tonight, and tomorrow we should have 10+ inches.  Hooray!  I clicked these on my walk home from the dentist.

In knitting news, the latest sock is Hedgerow Socks, by Jane Cochran (link to free pattern).  These have been in my queue for a while, and I even started them once, but didn’t think they made good office knitting.  They still aren’t the easiest office knitting I’ve ever done.  This surprises me.  The stitch pattern looks so easy.  It’s just:

Rnd 1-2: *K2 P1 K1 P2*
Rnd 3-4: *K1 P1 K2 P2*

But it can be difficult to see which round you’re on.  I haven’t had to rip back yet (knock on wood).  I also feel like I’m improving my ability to read my knitting.  So that’s all good.

I’m using the one skein of yarn I purchased at MDSW09, this lovely:

It’s from Green Mountain Spinnery in Vermont, a 2-ply 50/50 wool/mohair.  It’s the sock yarn I aspire to spin, fine, springy, beautiful.  And I adore the color, a dreamy undulation of greens that run the range from bluish-green to moss green: I also like that I’m using a New England pattern on a New England yarn.  Here is how they looked a couple of days ago:Now this has a heel on it.

I still haven’t make the Deck the Ball with the Starry yarn, but I promise I’ll do it this weekend (Kristina).  After all, we’ll be snowed in!

MDSW, continued

Spinnery Sock Art in Meadow
Originally uploaded by JLW in PA

So I've already told you about my spinning fiber acquisitions and the captivating talk by Judith MacKenzie McCuin ... but what about yarn? Truth be told, I didn't buy much yarn this year: only one skein of sock yarn. Wild, eh? This, however, is an exceptional skein of sock yarn. It was made at the Green Mountain Spinnery in Putney, VT (you may have read about this cooperative mill in Wild Fibers or other places) from 50% super fine kid mohair and 50% fine wool. I wish you could feel it - it's so springy and alive. At first I thought the colorway was "Meadow" (because of the beautiful greens), but a consultation with Ravelry and the GMS website indicate that Meadow is in fact the fiber blend. I guess the colorway is unnamed. I think I will always think of it as "Meadow," though! Whatever it is, I can't wait to knit a special pair of socks for myself from it.

I also managed to snag a bag from the Green Mountain Spinnery booth (you know I can never have too many bags). They had canvas bags in various sizes. The one I bought was their "scarf bag," but I think it's a nice size for socks. The sock bag looked a little teensy to me.

I picked up a few fun buttons at another booth - here they are on the new bag.

I planned to take the kids back to the button booth on Sunday and let them each pick out a button, but Sunday's trip never happened. It rained steadily all day long on Sunday, so we decided not to take the kids. It would have been a mudfest, and we didn't all have rain boots. It was sad that they missed it this year, but probably just as well. I feel more for the vendors, who probably saw considerably decreased traffic on Sunday. The Saturday crowd was lighter than I've seen it in years (it rained lightly in the morning and cleared up later), but the Sunday crowd was probably very thin.

I still need to post about the Beyond Beginning Spinning class I took on Wednesday and Thursday. After that post, I think i'll be caught up on MDSW09.