A Quiet Christmas

Merry Christmas to you!

It's been a quiet Christmas at Micawber Towers - probably the quietest ever. We're both recovering from a rather nasty virus, so we stayed home to spare the family any chance of infection. We slept in, ate a simple breakfast, napped, read, napped some more, played a few games of Chinese Checkers, had another small meal, then watched a bit of Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers (we're a little behind on our annual viewing of the classic film trio). Then another nap for Mr. M, and some photo-editing and blogging for me.

Here are a few photos from last week's (pre-virus) Christmas-tree-cutting excursion, which took place under a brilliant December sky....

I hope your Christmas was merry and bright!

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The Christmas Socks (a Tale of Woe), Part 3: It Ain't Over Till It's Over

Here at last is the harrowing conclusion to our stirring saga of Will over Wool,

in which Mrs. M - who had never yet completed a Second Sock -

undertook to knit a Pair of Gift Socks.

~ ~ ~

At the end of Part 2, our heroine was sitting pretty, with Sock One complete and Sock Two nearly so. Just a foot and a toe - a few hours' work - and her Tale of Woe would become a Song of Victory.

Swift and steady - more or less - was the knitting of Sock Two's foot. Our heroine's stitch tension (never her strong suit) was dramatically improved by the practice of "knitting ahead", or working an extra few stitches at the end of each dpn, thus minimising the chance of unsightly ladders.

We will gloss over the 3 accidentally-slipped stitches she found about 15 rows after slipping them, and the many attempts it took to: a) drop the right stitches, in the right order, down to the mistake; b) fix the mistake; c) pick all the dropped stitches back up again. Frogging and re-knitting the 15 rows would probably have been quicker; but our heroine regarded it as a Learning Experience. Nothing daunted, she knitted on, and found herself at last on the brink of Toe Number Two.

Toe Number Two! Magic words to one who had never yet finished a Second Sock. How excitedly did she work the decrease rounds! With what modest yet growing confidence did she Kitchener her way across the opening! How joyfully did she lay the socks toe-to-toe across her lap, admiring their pleasing symmetry!

Never again would she bear the shame of Second Sock Syndrome. She could hold her head high among the knitters of the world; she had Completed a Pair of Socks.

(Pause while knitting readers remember with nostalgia their own sense of accomplishment on first finishing a P. of S.)

But the ordeal was not yet over. You will, I am sure, sympathise with our heroine when I tell you that she waited several days before blocking the socks. She told herself she needed to research the best sock-blocking method - but the truth is she was afraid. What if something went wrong? What if the Socks stretched hopelessly out of shape? What if they (gasp) felted?

(Lest my readers be alarmed, let me hasten to assure you that the Socks did not felt. Fate had yet a blow in store for our heroine, but it was not so cruel as that.)

Common knitting wisdom dictates the following method for blocking wool socks: saturate the socks in tepid water (with or without a few drops of cleaning agent), being careful not to agitate them. Without wringing or twisting, squeeze out as much water as possible. Then roll them in a towel and squeeze (or step on) the rolled-up towel to extract still more water. Socks may then be shaped and allowed to dry.

Our heroine has never liked swishing small items in a sinkful of water - too drippy and messy when it comes to hauling them out. So after a bit of thought, she devised her own sock-wetting method, as follows:

1. Stack the socks, roll them up lengthwise, and put them in the bottom of a large plastic cup (a quart-size yoghurt container works well). Add water to cover:

2. Give the socks some time to soak up the water. When they're saturated, pour off the excess. Now insert another cup of the same size, and press it firmly against the wet socks. (Do this over a sink while holding the cups sideways or upside down, so the water can run off.) The second cup acts as a plunger to help squeeze out the moisture.

3. Remove socks from cup and admire their cake-like appearance.

Now for the clean towel, the rolling, squeezing and stepping...

...then the grand unveiling, and the laying-out of the socks on another towel to dry.

Our heroine was thrilled with how well the Socks looked after blocking; the transformation was almost miraculous. Most of the blips had evened out; the bumpy heel-turns were now smooth and tidy; the colourwork looked crisp and clean.

She gazed with affection at the damp socks, product of many hours' labour. But the affection soon turned to horror....

Toe Number Two pointed the wrong way. She had decreased in the wrong places.

They say that when a man is drowning, his entire life flashes before his eyes. Here are a few of the thoughts (rather bitter, I'm sorry to say) and images (strangely movie-related) that passed through our heroine's head as she gazed on the misshapen sock:

a) Aaaugh! Aaugh! Aaaaaugh!
b) ("That is the sound of ultimate suffering.")
c) If I were Tolkien, I'd have written a book called The Lord of the Socks. Instead of a Ring, Frodo would stagger through Middle-Earth dragging a set of dpns, working on a sock that could never be finished. His only hope would be to find the Yarn Shop of Fire and throw the @#*% thing in.
d) These are the Socks of Doom. How can I possibly mail them? Surely the plane will crash, or some dire mishap befall the poor postal employee who tries to deliver them.

and finally, when she had calmed down a bit...

e) What a great ending for the blog post.

(Our heroine was more of a philosopher than she realised. As a knitter she sighed and clutched her head, but as a writer she took consolation in the creative opportunity. Every cloud has a silver lining, they say.)

Lest our story take on the length of a novel, let us cut to the chase:

Our heroine knew she could never mail a sock with a cock-eyed toe. It didn't look right, it wouldn't fit right, and it certainly wouldn't wear well. Toe seams should run from side to side across the toes - not from the top of the foot to the bottom.

So she swallowed her bitter disappointment, called Patience to her aid once more, and waited for the socks to dry. Then, a sadder-but-wiser knitter, she frogged and re-worked the misshapen toe (not forgetting to first wet and weight the ravelled yarn to straighten out its kinks). And I'm happy to report that she had just enough yarn left to weave in at the end.

Thus ends our woolly saga. A Tale of Woe indeed, with only glimmers of triumph here and there - but rich in learning opportunities (or so our heroine consoles herself).

Sock Two is once more on the drying rack; in a few days, she hopes, she will be able to get this project out of the house and out of her life mail the Socks to their intended recipient.

Meanwhile, she's started on a pair of mittens to use up the leftover yarn....

(Thunder crashes offstage....)

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I could never have made these Socks without frequently tapping into the wealth of knowledge shared by a generous online knitting community. The following sites were especially helpful:

By Gum By Golly - how to keep yarn from twisting when working stranded colourwork
Paper Tiger - on colour dominance in stranded knitting
Techknitting - Kitchener stitch, blocking, help for wonky ribbing and all things knitting
My Jewel Thief Knits - useful foot size chart
Knitty - wonderful basic sock tutorials

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The Christmas Socks (a Tale of Woe), Part 2: Many a Slip, or, Frogging Builds Character

Welcome back to our stirring saga of will over wool,

in which Mrs. M - who has never yet completed a Second Sock -

undertakes to make not one, but a Pair, of Christmas-gift Socks.

When last seen, our heroine had, after several false starts, managed to design and produce several inches of acceptable sock leg. Filled with a quiet determination, she was well on her way to completing the colourwork portion of Sock One.

~

After what seems days (but is probably only an hour or three) of intense labour, Leg One is at last complete. Flushed with success, poised on the brink of The Heel, our heroine turns to the Internet for advice and counsel.

O inestimable Internet! Friend of ignorant knitters, well of woolly knowledge, inexhaustible source of advice and delight: what would we do without you? Eagerly does our heroine plumb your depths, searching out the deep mysteries of heels, weighing the relative merits of flap and short row, German and half-handkerchief, eye-of-partridge and slip stitch.

After much pondering, our Intrepid Knitter - having, with tolerable success, completed one German heel in her lifetime - decides to go with what she knows. The German heel is selected. But the flap - ah, the flap. In her quest for knowledge, our heroine has gathered that a loosely-spun 100% wool yarn is not the sturdiest choice for a pair of socks; something must be done to strengthen the heel area. Consulting once again the collected wisdom of the online knitting community, she decides on an eye-of partridge flap.

In addition to its delightfully exotic-sounding name, the eye-of-partridge flap possesses a lovely textured appearance, made by combining slipped and regular stitches in a 4-row repeat. Nothing could be simpler. After a few hiccups - accidentally slipping stitches on both purl and knit rows (ribbit), losing track of the repeat (ribbit), and waffling over how many rows are needed - our heroine at last produces a Heel Flap worthy of the name:

Onward she knits, and soon beholds with joy an actual Turned Heel:

In no time at all, she has picked up and knit the necessary stitches to continue down the sock:

The Gusset now calls with siren voice. Our heroine has rosy visions of pushing onwards to finish Sock One, but in a rare display of crafting self-control, she places Sock One on a stitch holder and proceeds instead to cast on for Sock Two. "If I knit the second leg now," she reasons to herself, "I stand a better chance of matching tension to the first leg. And I'll get all that fiddly colourwork out of the way."

Whether through the soundness of her reasoning or divine intervention, the leg of Sock Two does indeed go much more smoothly - apart from two trifling errors in the colourwork, one on the very first row and one on the very last (discovered, of course, when it was too late to do anything about it). But let us ignore these small stings and focus instead on the positive: our heroine has reached the second heel flap. Sunshine fills her knitting heart, and lights up the work-in-progress:

Meanwhile, Christmas has come. Our heroine has missed her deadline; she must now lay aside her knitting and take up the burden of hostess-ship for a time.

When the guests are gone, she looks to her needles and eagerly proceeds to The Gusset, which - after a slight contretemps caused by working the wrong decreases on the wrong sides of the heel (ribbit) - soon bursts forth in all its glory of compound angles and cunning joinery:

Sock Two, with gusset complete, is now placed on a holder while our heroine returns to Sock One. (She wants to do the other gusset while the process is fresh in her memory.)

Before you can say "baa", she has worked gusset and foot...

...has decreased for the toe...

...and has smoothly grafted said toe with the help of another Wisconsin blogger (thank you Techknitter!).

Our Intrepid Knitter has finished a sock; her Second First Sock, to be precise.

A quiet happiness fills her heart. Patience and Perseverance have Paid Off. All the mistakes, the frogging and re-working, are as receding ripples on the sea of memory. Sock One is complete.

With fresh courage, our heroine turns to Sock Two. Just a foot and a toe - a few hours' work - and this Tale of Woe will turn into a Song of Triumph. The longed-for happy ending is nearly in sight.

Or so she thinks.

To be continued....

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The Christmas Socks (a Tale of Woe), Part 1: False Starts and Yanky Ribbing

Some day I will have an organised Christmas. I will plan and make (or buy) all gifts well in advance. I will pre-bake batches of cookies to be stored in the freezer and pulled out on the big day. I will choose and sign Christmas cards - and address and stamp the envelopes - in November.

Some day my house will be company-clean all the time. I will brush cobwebs out of crevices all year long, and wash down the miles of woodwork on a monthly basis, instead of waiting until the weekend before Christmas, when pride (or shame) compels me to remove the dust of centuries months.

Some day I will sail serenely through December, secure in the knowledge that I am cool, calm, and ready for the hordes of loved ones that descend each year upon Micawber Towers to celebrate with us the birth of our Saviour.

Some day....

~ ~ ~

The above is a very False Start indeed. Let us now return to the Real World, where I -- even I, who have never yet completed a Second Sock -- am knitting away furiously at the first of a Pair of gift socks.

In the front of my mind I'm counting stitches (3 gray, 1 blue, 1 gray, 4 blue). At the back of my mind are various uneasy thoughts, all clamouring for attention: You need to post that free ornament pattern! You should have finished that Binding Off with a Hook series weeks ago! What about the 2015 wildflower list? Have you ordered gifts for the two great-nieces? Isn't it time to make the next batch of caramelcorn? Have you edited the Aged P's Christmas letter? Don't forget he needs help with his Christmas shopping. What about the latest call for magazine submissions? When are you going to finish those samples? Aack! A dpn has fallen out again. That clock can't be right - is it really that late?

The last-minute scramble to make Christmas gifts is an almost annual event at Micawber Towers. Usually it's my own fault: I suffer from a boundless optimism about time (how much I can get done in it, or how much is needed for a particular task); I also have delusions about working best under pressure.

But sometimes the pressure is caused by outward forces: the family name-drawing doesn't happen in a timely fashion, difficult gift requests are made, the gift theme (this year it's Made in the USA) is awkward or time-consuming to fulfil.

Which brings us to The Socks. My giftee requested "something knitted, Fair Isle, in pale grey - either big socks to wear around the house, or mittens." Not too tall an order for a Time Optimist. I can knit stranded colourwork. I've completed a sock in my lifetime. This gift request is not beyond my skillset. And good, reasonably-priced, quick-to-ship American-made yarn can't be that hard to find.

Cue the sinister music....

I will spare you the agonising details of time spent floundering in the Swamp of Indecision (located somewhere between the Valley of Decision and the Pit of Despair), of my struggles with a) finding yarn (thanks again, Amy, for pointing me to that sale); b) choosing motifs; c) deciding on the number of cast-on stitches; d) fitting the motifs attractively into the number of stitches available. (A reasonable person might have simply chosen an existing pattern to follow. I suffer from Designer's Itch and am therefore not reasonable.)

Let us turn from these scenes of laborious research, and jump ahead to the happy time when our heroine takes her needles and newly-acquired, luscious all-American yarn in hand. A rainy Sunday, Christmas music playing, lights shining softly from the tree by her side - what could be more pleasant?

The ribbing alone nearly made me give up. *K2, P2. Repeat from *. It should be simple, but for a beginner-to-intermediate, less-than-perfect-tension knitter like me, it's a recipe for wobbly columns and loopy frustration. This problem is not solely my own; from the wealth of tips available online, it would appear to be almost universal. Solutions range from the simple (knit more tightly) to the extremely creative (see this post by Techknitter for some examples).

First I tried knitting more tightly. It gave me a nice tidy ribbing, and I galloped happily on to the motif rounds. Then I noticed that the cuff edge was rather small - so small, I was afraid it would cut off the giftee's circulation. I also ran up against the stumbling block of Motifs Not Matching Up at Round Starts (seen on the right edge in photo below):

Version 1 - designed to cut off circulation at the ankle.

There followed much research and experimentation with tricks to overcome the motif problem, another lengthy flounder through the Swamp of Indecision, and at last a determination to redesign the motifs, allowing for a line of plain stitches down each side of the sock to minimise the offset at round ends.

So much for Version 1.

Then I had the bright idea of adding 8 stitches to the total count, as well as a rolled edge for comfort (an excellent idea culled from the pages of Techknitter's blog). I will call this Version 2.1. (No photos were taken; the human spirit can only stand so much.) Stitch tension was so relaxed on 2.1 that my dentist mistook it for a sleeve when he walked into the exam room and found me knitting away in the dental chair. (We've reached Tuesday, by the way. This is an Epic Sock.) Rip went Version 2.1.

Then came Version 2.2 - 4 stitches smaller, and back to the tighter-than-tight gauge on the ribbing. At first it wasn't so bad - the cuff now looked comfortably human-ankle-sized - but the sock body ballooned out into unreasonable proportions, and the new stitch pattern wasn't working out as well as I'd hoped. Several froggings later, snip went the scissors and Version 2.2 was thrown onto the Pile of Humiliation. Back to the Swamp of Indecision for Mrs. M.

Version 2.2 - leg nearly large enough for an elephant.

After strenuous thought (and a few desperate prayers), our intrepid knitter made the bold decision to reduce the stitch count to its original number, and to try to work the ribbing at a reasonable tension, using a compromise fix of her own devising. (She calls it Yanky Ribbing.)

"I may not be able to knit/purl with perfect tension, but by golly I'm going to show that yarn who's in charge - if not during the stitch, then after," she said to herself.

(Dear me - I seem to have strayed into the third person. What the heck - it's my blog. I can do what I want. "Within reason," whispers the soft yet relentless Voice of Syntactic Conscience....)

Every technique needs a good mantra, and here's the mantra for Yanky Ribbing: "Knit, knit, yank, purl-with-a-yank, purl." (If you pause for a beat after "yank" and "purl", it pairs rather nicely with the rhythm of "The Little Drummer Boy.")

"Knit, knit, yank" explains itself - knit one stitch, knit the next, then give the working yarn a tug. "Purl-with-a-yank", though mysterious-sounding at first, is equally simple: purl the first purl, but before you slip it off the needle, tug the working yarn again. Then work the second purl. Keep a moderately firm tension throughout, paying careful attention to the places where you switch needles.

Inelegant, you say? Bad knitting practice? Perhaps. But it seems to work. Here is Version 3 at the time of this writing:

Hope dawns....

You will notice that not only has our knitter produced a decent-looking cuff of reasonable size, she has also made significant progress into the charted portion of her project (after frogging and re-working a few inches when she found that some of her floats were improperly woven).

She now feels cautiously optimistic, and is not without hope that this Tale of Woe may yet turn into a quiet song of Triumph....

~ ~ ~

We now return to the first person.

I've been tempted to name this sock "The Doctor", for it's had about as many transformations as that fabled character. (And, as with him, some versions have been more appealing than others.)

My watchwords now are Patience and Perseverance. All I have to do is finish the Fair Isle-style ankle portion, decide what heel turn to use, figure out how to strengthen the sole for around-the-house wear, determine the proper length for someone who wears a size 8.5 shoe, and finish the sock. Then make another one. And block them both.

I can do that by next Friday, right?

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Looking for Colour in a Grey World

The world has been grey for so many days, we've forgotten what the sun looks like. All our lovely bits of snow have melted off; the weather is now just warm enough not to snow, and to turn what moisture there is into fog and damp.

A good time to get out the Christmas mini-quilts and begin the annual decorating. Though I haven't quilted anything in years, I love to decorate with these:

Most of them are quilted by machine, but this one is almost entirely hand-quilted:

(Back in my quilting days, quilt backs were mostly plain. But still fun to look at if you're a quilter.)

My only bargello project (can you tell I was a big fan of meandering quilting?):

Detail of a tiny paper-pieced block:

Looking at the all the fabric trees made me want to find a real one, so on Sunday I headed out to the local tree farm. Dampness filled the air, diffusing the light and making all my photos just a little misty.

The car bumped over the trail as I headed for the farthest possible corner of the farm.

I've written before about this tree farm; it's an unconventional one where baby trees mingle with reverend old pine and spruce, nothing is ever dyed or sprayed, and trees are trimmed casually if at all. A very far cry from the manicured rows of matching, near-perfect trees at a traditional tree farm - but I like it just the way it is.

Stumps are everywhere, as are tiny new trees just starting out in life:

This stump was covered with lovely pale-green fungi, like tiny jade-coloured horns:

Some of the trees come pre-decorated; I was sorely tempted to take this one:

In fact I'd already found what would become our tree, almost the moment I set foot out of the car. But I still walked the entire farm - partly to see if there were a better tree somewhere else, and partly for the joy of traipsing through woods and fields on a misty December day, admiring the golden stubble, the pale champagne grass, the blue-green spruce, and the rusty-red-needle-carpeted ground.

I didn't find a better tree, but I did find plenty of colour under those grey skies. Then back to the car for the saw and the chosen tree, then home in the deepening twilight.

Here's our tree, lit but not yet decorated:

Judging by the photo above, I seem to have brought some of that mistiness indoors with me. (Actually my little camera couldn't get a clear shot in the dark room, so the photo was pixellated for the fun of it).

Ooh - pixellated photo = quilted tree! :)

How's your world right now? Grey, white, brown, or colourful?

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When a Cyclist Has Leftover Christmas Tree Branches....

:D

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