scifiknitter

Like many people, I face a constant challenge trying to find ideas for appropriate, thoughtful gifts for my parents. In my case, I like to add “useful” to the criteria, as all of my parents are surrounded by beautiful objects. I don’t think they need another gorgeous vase, and there is no room on the walls for another picture. While once in a while I come up with an idea on my own, more and more I simply ask them what they would like. Last year, I asked my stepmom and dad what they wanted for Christmas. They answered that they wanted two things. First, they did not think an oak tree growing very near to their house was healthy, and they asked us to take that tree down and cut it up for firewood. This is a particular skill of my husband’s - R. is at one with his tool when he is wielding a chainsaw. My stepmom also asked me to knit her a pair of socks. She asked for black socks that would be taller than the usual 7” cuff, because she likes socks as tall as possible. Other than that, I ha...

Two projects are featured here. One has been done for a while, but I didn't have a good picture of it on its recipient. The other project is one I finished yesterday, just in time to give it away. The Studly Lace Scarf This project is a combination of a pattern I liked and a hank of yarn I happened to have in my stash. The pattern was a dropped-stitch basketweave scarf in the spring/summer 2009 issue of Vogue Knitting, and was designed by Laura Bryant. The magazine shows it as a wide scarf, almost a shawl, in a delicate pink. The pattern has a cool feature: you deliberately drop certain stitches and let them run down from the top to the bottom of the scarf. A dreaded mistake is transformed into a design element. The yarn I had was dark, shot through with yellow, reds and greens - a very different feeling. I also had only one skein. I decided to make the scarf narrower than designed, to make sure it would be as long as possible. I also knew that as much as I liked it as I was knitti...

Cat Bordhi's book New Pathways for Sock Knitters is a feast of possibility if socks are your thing. She features eight sock architectures, each interpreted in several different ways, and each that solve the essential engineering challenge of the sock in a nontraditional way. The challenge of the sock? The leg and the ball of the foot are about the same diameter, but the sock needs more fabric at the joint, where foot and leg meet. Traditional sock designs add and then subtract the extra fabric at the ankles, in a triangular wedge called the heel gusset. One day, Bordhi rotated a partially completed sock around her foot, and noticed that the gusset form could be put anywhere on the foot, and the engineering still worked. The socks I blogged about recently, her "Spring Thaw" socks, adjust the sock width on the sole. The pair I just finished, "Tibetan Socks", make their adjustment on the top of the foot. These socks are knit with a double strand of sock yarn. I cho...

I was able to complete these socks over the short vacation I just took. Five days, with much of two days spent in travel. We visited friends in Connecticut, and my dad and stepmother on Cape Cod. I could have used one more day on the Cape, but soon I will have 11 days off in a row, so I am not complaining. These socks were designed by Cat Bordhi and were in the Summer 2008 issue of Knitter's magazine. They are probably the most perfectly designed pattern I have ever knit. I knit them in Knitpick's gloss yarn, a 70% merino wool 30% silk blend. The yarn is as scrumptious as the pattern. It's very rewarding to use such a fine material to materialize such a fine vision. The socks are knit in twisted rib, which makes the raised stitches "pop". It takes more time to knit a ribbed fabric as the yarn is constantly moving from front to back. Some things are worth more time. The top of the sock is lovely, with embedded leaves, but nothing screams a truly distinctive design ...

I am not immune to the lure of the viral knitting pattern, thus I found myself knitting a pair of Jaywalkers over the past couple of months. How viral? There are 4,625 finished pairs of Jaywalkers listed in the projects database on Ravelry, and 2,228 knitters have this pattern in their queues (i.e. they hope to make it some day). Here are the pics, before I get to more technical details: The pattern was designed by Grumperina, and was originally published as a free pattern on an online knitting magazine called Magknits. Alas, poor Magknits ran into financial difficulties and abruptly shut down. This created a small small firestorm in the online knitting world, as people suddenly found their access to much beloved patterns no longer existed. The moral of the story: if you see something you like, assume that everything on the Internet is here-today-quite-possibly-gone-tomorrow, download it as a pdf, and save it on your harddrive! Jaywalker is available again as a free download on Ravelry...