Things done, things to do over, and things to do

I finished the quilt on Tuesday! I could hand-tack the mitered corners and the join for the binding, but I'll see if that's really necessary once I wash it. It's in the machine now.

I'm almost pleased with the results, but I find myself a little amazed that the whole of it is much fancier than I envisioned as I was working on the parts of it. However, it's home art (or folk art) that was created in this home, and therefore, I must judge it "just right" for our home.


I hung the quilt over one end of the ping pong table (with one end of the table pulled up in a vertical position) in the garage so I could get these pictures. It seemed like the largest surface we had where I could hang something. The top picture shows the pieced back, with the front folded over a little, on the left, showing the contrast between the back and front. The picture to the right shows a little less than one half of the front.


In the spirit of finishing projects this week, I finished a little pair of socks I started in February of this year. I love the feel of hand-knitted socks so much - they are so comfortable for my feet. The foot itself was what I really wanted, so I didn't knit a long leg for them. Instead, I knit a only a few rows after the back of the heel (these are knit toes up - not leg down) and then did a half a dozen rows of k2, p2 ribbing and then a double-knit set of four rows for an invisible bindoff (Cat Bordi, Socks Soar...). As such, they are loose around the ankle - and that's good for me. I tend to show pressure marks with even the slightest bind on my legs. These are comfortable.

I started these using a toe technique from one sock book (Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch), added my own improvisation through the foot, and used Cat Bordi's heel found in her Socks Soar book.

The sole of the foot is primarily alternating rows of k1, sl1, k next row (knit in the round) for a sturdy bottom of foot. This technique is a standard heel stitch, but some years ago I read that this might be good for the entire sole - and it is. The top of the foot is a moss stitch - two rows of k2, p2, then two rows of p2, k2 (again, all in the round).

You can see in the picture that I slipped (memory slipped, that is) the heel stitch for several rows between the ball of the foot and the heel itself - it shows up in the bulky part around the bottom arch. This shouldn't have been, but these socks are for me, and because I didn't want to rip these out, I can live with it.

I probably had enough of the brown tweedy yarn to make these socks without any contrast, but I wasn't sure it was going to last so I used a different yarn for the heel turn. The brown tweedy is Cervinia - 70% wool and 30% polyamide, and it's machine washable. It was one of the specials at http://www.smileysyarns.com/ - I hardly ever buy expensive yarn. The contrast yarn is some I've had for eons (purchased for the Fair Isle project - later in this post).

Washable is a good thing for me. No matter what I make, I want to be able to toss it in the washing machine when it needs cleaning. With two of us doing washing, I learned years ago that I should not have hand-wash things. That's a sure recipe for an argument and some unhappy feelings in our house. With so many other more important things to argue about, if one needs an argument, my clothing and projects should not be among the stimulants!

Using the contrasting yarn, though, has a good side effect. It shows me exactly which part of my sock is the heel turn. The next pair I make, I will make each segment of the sock with a contrasting yarn so I can see just which part is the knitted toe, foot, heel flap, and so forth! That's really good information when you're designing and measuring.

Along with the yarn, by the way, all my socks have an accompanying strand of wooly nylon for reinforcement (strengthening). Wooly nylon is sold as serger thread and is available in almost any fabric store. I find the nylon helps make a really comfortable fabric for my feet, too. I wind the nylon on sewing machine bobbins and knit with a strand of yarn and a strand of nylon as though it were one strand. Because I used a variegated nylon with this pair, strange colors such as blue and bright red pop up in the sock. But that's ok for me.

But do I want to do socks as my next project? I don't know. It's been along time since I really knitted, and actually knew what I was doing. I keep getting the nudge (from inside my head) that I need to quit winging it and actually learn (or relearn) how to knit.

In going through my stash (really not too large, but some of it is old), I found this piece of Fair Isle and decided I had no idea where I was going to go from where I left off years ago, and so I'm now in the process of unraveling it.

This was my first attempt at Fair Isle knitting, probably inspired by reading Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting once too often! (I just looked this up on Amazon so I could get the link, and it's selling for $140 from third-party sellers! Yikes!!!)

This pattern is my own design, and I have no record of it. I know it was intended to be a vest of some sort, but I can't find my notes anywhere. I thought that maybe I could measure it and feel it and think about it and maybe pick up where I left off, but then I decided that would be more trouble than just picking it out and learning to do all this again.


I must have started this project in the early 90s because I'm sure both Mom and Dad were very much in our lives then. I can almost see Mom and Dad living with us at the time, but I don't think that can be true. Memories tend to meld together and become timeless. I think, but am not sure, that I worked for a CPA firm in La Jolla, and that would put it in the late 80s. My edition of Alice's book is 1988, and the price on the back of it was $34.95.

So, anyway, here I am, unraveling. It's interesting to watch how it went together - strands interwoven.

The Fair Isle made a nice fabric, so I think I'll chart out an actual pattern (based on something I can document well and then follow) and start fresh. It's hard for me to follow someone else's pattern to the T - I always think I have to do something original. It's the same with cooking. I'll look at the recipe, but if I make it by the recipe even once, it's a victory for me. My quest for some originality is a handicap, and it costs me because my (1) my experiments aren't always successful and (2) when they are (at least for cooking) I don't always remember what I did!

In going through old knitting magazines last evening, though, I found Faux Fair Isle knitting in the Fall 94 issue of Vogue Knitting. That looks interesting, with the colors created using a slip stitch pattern. No row has more than one color, but because you are slipping stitches on each row, a stitch from the previous row, in a contrasting color, sits in the row you're working on - thus, creating a fake fair isle effect. I might try a few swatches to see what I think of this method. This might be something, too, that I can incorporate into the back of the heel of a sock since I use a slip stitch pattern there already.


There was a day when I actually thought I knew what I was doing when I knit.

When I designed and knit these vests, I had no problem understanding what I was doing. My Vogue Knitting book was beside me (the 1989 version, so that gives me a good date for these vests), and I understood (somehow) about how to make the parts the right size, do the right increases and decreases for the shaping, how to mix color and combinations of patterns. I'd like to get there again.



Neither of these vests were difficult, and they were fun to make and I've enjoyed having them. I'm glad I didn't toss them (or give them away) during one of my clean up campaigns during those years when I had poofed out too much to wear them comfortably. Last year I wore them once or twice and will wear them more this winter.

Thus goes the blog for today. It catches me up with my thoughts and helps me get turned around looking toward tomorrow.