Knit Along: Comin’ Round the Mountain Socks from Hearthstone Knits - Day 5

Heel!

Fear my lethal knitting skills.  Stand in awe of my double, simultaneously-turned heels and the switchback, excruciatingly calculated pattern that graces the top of the foot.  

You didn’t hear the grunting, nor hear me tell my family kindly to “leave me alone!” while I dug my heels in (pun intended) and made this thing work.

And work it did.  In fact, I’d go so far as to say that what I feared would be the hardest section of these clever socks was, in reality, not that hard. 

Which gives this pattern the most highly revered of all Allie pattern virtues:  looks difficult but isn’t.  Yes, that’s right, I’m a fan of smoke and mirrors when it comes to knitting.  Cooking, too.  Give me something that looks and sound impressive but in actuality didn’t ask too much of me and I’m your friend forever.  

Yes, I suppose that makes me shallow.  But it also means that in another couple of days, I’ll have a really spiffy pair of socks.  Both of them.

Impressive, toasty-toed bliss!  Oh dear, I shall be even more difficult to live with than before.

Knit Along: Comin’ Round the Mountain Socks from Hearthstone Knits - Day 4

Impatience

Yikes!  It took me almost a week to get those final inches of the sock pattern done!  It always infuriates my impatient nature when I can’t get to a milestone in a pattern in the timeframe I want.  It’s the writer in me...I’m way too deadline oriented.  Now, in a manuscript under contract, the family will cut me a little slack (translation:  eat pizza on less-than-clean counters).  They’re not as generous with my self-imposed knitting deadlines.  Perhaps if you all send me threatening emails, groaning about how you sit at home pining over my next installment...

In my daughter's terminology, as if.

I am delighted to report, however, that I have reached the heel flaps.  It’s rather like a fiber exhale, the simple rhythm of slip one, knit one, back and forth.  No stitch wrangling and mind-bending adaptations.  Of course, all of this peace and productivity will come to a screeching halt when I get to the “switchbacks”--especially since I’ve realized many of my swirling stripes aren’t exactly the same number of stitches wide. 

Yes, that could spell trouble indeed.

Knit Along: Comin’ Round the Mountain Socks from Hearthstone Knits - Day 3

We’re chugging around the mountain, steady and sure.  I suspect I have an inch more before I tackle the challenge of turning two heels, but here at my conference the progress is just about right.  Sure, I squint at my needles when I need to make that yarn-over jump, but the pattern is trailing in lovely spirals that don’t give me too much trouble.  Don’t have time for much more reporting while I’m here, but I’m happy with my progress and don’t have any major mess-ups to confess.  I’ll check in again when I attempt the heel.

It is fun to be in a large group here at the conference, with many people who know of and share my love for knitting (and no, it’s not a knitting event...it’s a writers event but I have cultivated a large circle of knitting writer friends to be sure).  We’ve had some grand adventures that will make up the next episode of DestiKNITions.  My favorite thing, though, is that they all know it’s perfectly fine to knit through educational sessions.  In fact, many of them have said my knitting in public has made it okay for them to do so as well.  That’s my kind of campaign!

Knit Along: Comin’ Round the Mountain Socks from Hearthstone Knits - Day 2

Gourmet Fudge

I’ve figured out I only really have to cheat on the two segments that form the innermost edges of my socks--the ones that never see both points of my circular needle.  For the outer edges, I can shift stitches around to have that K2tog-Y0 where I need it, even if it jumps needles.  The inner edges, by virtue of their attachments to the middle sections of the circular needles, cannot be shifted.  But I’ve figured out a way to almost invisibly make the pattern work.  Well, I think I’ve succeeded.

Okay, if you’re staring at my feet, you’ll see it.  But in the charming way my mother used to put it, if you’re staring at my feet I’ve done something wrong already.  

So I have come to the milestone in my career where I feel confident...ahem cocky...enough in my skills to adapt a pattern to suit my particular needs...ahem neurosis.  What does this say about my knitting?  About my attitude?  

No, I don’t have problems with authority, but I prefer to think I am aware enough of my strengths and weaknesses as a knitter (mainly that it’s more important that I produce two socks simultaneously than face a lifetime of owning one perfect sock) to plot the wisest course through a project.

I do really enjoy this yarn and the delicate winding of these yarn-overs.  Spiffy but not over-complicated.  I’m not sure I’d ever wear complicated socks.  Then again, socks as a project are really growing on me...they present a technical challenge while being highly functional, they travel well, and you don’t run the risk of poking out the eye of the person next to you on the plane or at the conference.  

I’ve got the perfect amount yet to go...another couple of inches on the leg--before I attempt the brain-boiling challenge of turning of two heels at once.  This could become very entertaining.

Well, for you maybe.

Knit Along: Comin’ Round the Mountain Socks from Hearthstone Knits - Day 1

Because I have two feet, you know...

That steam you saw rising over northern Illinois?  That was the smoke coming out of my overtaxed brain.  That grinding you heard?  My mental gears trying to figure out how to adapt this lovely pattern to my particular sensibilities.

Um, I may have bitten off more than I can chew here.

I need to say that none of my mental anguish has anything to do with Georgia’s charming pattern.  Her pattern is just fine.  Clever and original.  No, that’s not the issue.

This issue is that I don’t have the attention span to ensure production of a second sock so I need to do the “two socks on one circ” method.  Which makes for a complicated cast on, and some very tricky stitch-wrangling to handle the traveling yarn-over design as it jumps from needle to needle around the sock.  In short, certain portions of this episode’s festivities will be “fudged” in the name of getting both socks simultaneously done.  

Because I like these socks, I really like this yearn, and last time I checked I had two feet.

One of which I may be inserting repeatedly into my mouth during all this.

Will it work?  Will I be calling Georgia in a panic, testing her customer’s claim that “when I need help, I know this is where I can get it.”?  Could be.  In fact, I might go so far as to say “highly likely.”  

I’ll let you know.

Knit Along: Elizabethan Collar from Kirkwood Knittery - DONE!

Knitting as Self-Improvement

Knitting is a good thing for me.  It helps me with my pesky delayed gratification problem.  Projects like this one, which need to be blocked before they look anything like they’re supposed to, strengthen my oh-so-weak patience muscle.  Sticking the gazillion pins in this thing so it would stretch out and dry right seemed so tedious.  And then I had to wait overnight.  Grr.

But the results are lovely.  Sometimes a full length scarf of a highly textured shawl are just too much for a given jacket or shirt.  You just need a little something.  If I wore necklaces--which I don’t, because I’d much rather wear a shawl or scarf--that’d be the right touch.  This is, for lack of a better metaphor, a knitted necklace.  It’d give a pretty scoop-neck t-shirt just the panache it needed.  Or add a hint of artistry to a boring jacket.  I wonder how it would look over a cowl or a turtleneck?  Would the lines be wrong or would it add a nice dimension?  It’s still a bit too warm to try that experiment.  

See that cute button?  I tried to go for a bit of subtlety on the button, but now I sort of regret it.  I think if I find something with a bit more “pow,” I may replace it.  Something vintage and silvery but not too heavy. 

It was a good traveling project, whipped up with just enough interest and at a quick pace. Thanks, Kirkwood Knittery!  I’ll do this one again, but in one of those multi-color yarns next time.  

Next up?  A pair of nifty socks from Hearthstone Knits.