Pattern: Ironwork Socks
Designer: Kelly Porpiglia

Yarn Brand: Schoeller + Stahl
Yarn Name: Fortissima 4 fache
Yarn Colorway: 295 (Gray)
Yarn Content: 75% Virgin Wool, 25% Polyamide
Yardage: 1 ball = 1.75 oz (50g) = 230 yards (210 m)

Yarn Source: Nancy’s Knits, Houston, TX
Amount of yarn purchased: 2 balls

Amount of yarn used: 1 ball for 1 sock

Needle: Size US 1 1/2 (2.5 mm) 2 24″ circulars (ADDIS)

Gauge: 9 sts / 11 rows = 1 inch in stockinette stitch

Dimensions: Medium

Project Duration: Started = 10/02/2007 – 02/07/2008 (4 months)

Recipient: Myself

Project Notes:
This was a hard hard hard pattern!!!!

Phew…… I sure am glad to be back. I had mail stacked up to the ceiling (all bills), new yarn to catalog, new yarn to take pictures off, update my blog, meet my sponsor (which I soooo didn’t this morning because I overslept!), unpack, laundry and the list goes on.

Notice how the yarn stuff came first.

So, there was one part of my trip that I hadn’t written about yet, it was my little visit to San Francisco’s Japan Town. What a treat!!! I knew, from word of mouth, that there would be little knitting treasures there and I sure found one at this book store – KINOKUNIYA BOOKSTORE. Here, just look at the bag.

And due to the lack of time and the problem of the foreign language, I randomly picked out:

Hell if I know what it says, but I think that first, it’s a stitch book, like the Barbara Walker books and second, it’s Aran themed. Look at all these little beauties…….. well, I wouldn’t call them little, but I just love how they have take the Classic Western Aran and added an Eastern touch to it. Don’t you think?

Lovely, I think it would be great to design some sort of vest with my 10 balls of Californian Hempathy bought from Article Pract with one of these designs and then I can call it my Japanese/All-Material-Bought-In-California Vest. LOL, that is IF I am even ‘capable’ of designing. I just know how to read patterns, not creative at all. But anywho….

I’m excited…… for now. But I got to get another thing done first, and here is the very latest of Kelp Knits’ Ironworks sock, again another Japanese derived Pattern, hence the title, All Things Japanese.

Even though this pattern is already for sale on Ravelry, I’m still finding errors in the charts. Well, but that’s the whole point of test knitting. And I love it.

Ok, time to get on with the chores and cataloging and all the Christmasy things to come.

If you all don’t hear from me, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. If you do, I’ll just wish you again!

Pattern: Whitby by Nancy Bush

Reference Books: Knitting On The Road

Yarn Brand: Conjoined Creations
Yarn Name: Flat Feet – to be released January 2008
Yarn Colorway: 9
Yarn Content: 80% Superwash Merino, 20% Nylon
Yardage: Flat machine knitting sheet – 100 g

Yarn Source: Conjoined Creations

Needle Size: 2 1/2 US (2.75 mm) ” (INOX)

Project Duration: Started = 11/02/2007 – 11/18/2007 (17 days for 1 sock)

Recipient: Test Knit – Conjoined Creations

Project Notes:
So, this is a very interesting knit.

The pattern is simple and pretty, not complicated. Nancy Bush sure has some nice sock patterns, the only problem I have with her is that she doesn’t do multiple sizes. All of the pattern in Knitting on the Road come in just 1 size. But anyways, I don’t really want to talk about the pattern, but more of how the yarn is presented to the knitter.

I’m not quite sure what the “official” statement by Conjoined Creations is, but here is my take on the concept.

Somebody gets some yarn, feeds it into a knitting machine and produces a blank sheet of knitting. Then some artistic person will randomly paint/dye colors on it blending, blotting, splotching like so:

Then after it is all dry and ready to go, you just knit straight from the flat sheet. Interesting concept huh?

But of course, there are pros and cons and they are purely my opinion. Lets talk about the good stuff first. No knots. Easy and flat transportation of yarn, your yarn is not in a huge yarn cake. And knitting from a sheet is fun! Unravelling and then reknitting.

Now the drawback to all of this is that you are knitting with really really kinked up yarn. Unravelling and rewinding it into a ball would defeat the whole purpose, but it’s really not that bad you know, because the kinks will be solved once you block the sock, which I did.

Another thing which could be a pro or a con is that how you paint the blank will determine how your sock will come out. That might be exciting for some, who live life riskfully and will take color chances, but it would drive someone like me nuts, who MUST know if the way I paint it will stripe or pool the sock. And then I guess another good thing about this is the ease of dying the yarn itself. So much easier painting a flat piece than the conventional way of dying yarn. But I will never dye yarn, so I wouldn’t have to worry about this.

Thank you all for your kind comments on my dog attack incident. Annie is starting to feel better. She is finally eating a little and jumping around. I am still a little stressed out…. but more in a separate post.

While Annie was getting stitched up, I finished my Jaywalkers. This is long overdue. I just don’t know how some people can knit a pair of socks in 2 days, this took me more than one whole month!!

Pattern: Jaywalker by Grumperina

Yarn Brand: Knit Picks
Yarn Name: Simple Stripes
Yarn Colorway: 23547 Vineyard
Yarn Content: 75% Superwash Wool, 25% Nylon
Amount of yarn used: 2 balls exactly (1 ball = 50 grams, 231 yards)

Needle: Size 2 US 40″ (Addi)

Gauge: 1 inch = 8 stitches in stockinette stitch, 3.5 inches = 38 stitches in Jaywalker zig zag pattern.

Dimensions: I knit this pair of socks to fit me. The 2×2 ribbing is 2″ long. 7″ from top of sock to heel flap. 8″ from heel flap to toe. Approximately 7″ around foot.

Project Duration: 01/19/2006 – 02/27/2006 (40 days) Just too long!

Project Notes:
There was nothing very complicated about this pattern. It is very well written for using dpns. I decided to attempt knitting 2 socks at the same time using 1 long circular needle. I wrote some tutorials on how to do this. There are 5 mini tutorials on the different sections of the sock. Look back at my previous posts. I don’t anticipate anyone to really pay attention, but if you do have any questions on how to do this, feel free to e-mail me.

While knitting the Jaywalker pattern, I was concern about the little holes I was getting right where the even round ends and the pattern round began. This all went away after washing the socks.

I do have to comment about the fuzz factor of this yarn. Now I am no yarn expert, but when the ball band says machine washable, I expect the yarn to be pretty much the same after coming out of the washer. However, after washing, this yarn fuzzed up noticeably.

Well, this is the first time that I’m knitting with superwash wool so I am not sure if this is the normal. But my intial reaction to all of this is that Knit Picks yarn is very affordable and this is the price you would have to pay. And I could be wrong.

I guess the thing that I can do is go buy some more “expensive” superwash wool and check out the fuzz factor. Not sure, but maybe you all can enlighten me.

I finished my second pair of socks! I had quite a bit of knitting time in Austin while riding out Hurricane Rita.

I told myself, that with every pair of socks I make (or with anything that I make for that matter), I need to learn something new. So, for my first pair, I learnt to use DPN’s. This time, I knitted 2 socks at the same time using the Magic Loop technique.

I believe that Magic Loop was first published and popularized by the company Fiber Trends. It allows you to knit small circular items using 1 long circular needle. With a little bit more information from the internet, I ended up knitting 2 socks at the same time on one long circular.

Here are some notes on this project:

Started: 09/15/2005
Finished: 09/24/2005
Time it took: 10 days

Needle Size: US 1, 40″ circular Addi Turbo

Yarn: Knit Picks, Dancing 41% Cotton, 39% Wool, 13% Nylon, 7% Elastic, Jig Colorway

Gauge: 10 stitches/inch in stockinette (I didn’t realize how tight I knitted these!!!)

Pattern: Adapted from web instructions “Knitting 2 Socks at One Time on 1 Long Circular Needle”

I cast on 48 stitches over two size 1 needles. I read somewhere that doing this will eliminate the chance for the cast on edge to be too tight and that you can cast on as tightly as you want over 2 needles so that your cast on will be even.

I then knitted a K2, P2 rib for 3/4 inches followed by regular stockinette stitch for another 2 1/4 inches.

Once I was done with the cuff, it was time to knit the heel flap. I used the Eye of Partridge stitch for the heel flap.

I started the heel turn when I saw that I was able to pick up 12 stitches from the chain selvedge of the heel flap. I ended up picking up 15 stitches on each side because of the last purl row before the heel turn and the last knit row after the heel turn.

I turned the heel using Nancy Bush’s round heel formula from Folk Socks.
Round Heel:
Knit to the middle of the row, k2, skp, k1, turn work
Next row: sl1, p5, p2tog, p1 turn
Next row: sl1, k to within 1 st away from gap, skp, k1, turn
Next row: sl1, p to within 1 st away from gap, p2tog, p1, turn

I still haven’t really figured out the mechanics of turning the heel, but hey, this works.

Then the rest of the sock is pretty basic. I decreased every other row till I had the same amount of stitches when I started. Knitted till the foot was about 3 1/2″ long and finished with the wedged toe.

Lessons Learnt:
At first, I wasn’t getting a nice chain selvedge on each side of the heel flap for picking up the gusset stitches. I decided to rip and investigate why I was getting a nice chain selvedge on one side of the heel flap and getting little bumps on the other side.

With a hint from Martha while I was in Pittsburgh, I realized that while you can slip k-wise or slip p-wise, slipping with the yarn in front and the yarn in the back is also VERY important.

So, I looked up chain selvedges in my Vogue Knitting book. They talk about the German, English and French methods of knitting chain selvedges.

This is the original heel pattern:
Row 1 (wrong side): sl1, p across, k last stitch
Row 2 (right side): sl1, *k1, sl1* across ending with k1
Row 3: sl1, p across, k last stitch
Row 4: sl2, *k1, sl1* across, ending with k2

This is what I did:
Row 1: sl1 p-wise wyif, p across, k last stitch
Row 2: sl1 p-wise wyif, *k1, sl1 p-wise wyib* across ending with k1
Row 3: sl1 p-wise wyif, p across, k last stitch
Row 4: sl1 p-wise wyif, sl1 p-wise wyib, *k1, sl1 p-wise wyib* across, ending with k2

I got perfect chain selvedges on both sides of the heel flap! I think the bumps on one side were caused by what I was doing in Row 4; I was slipping the first stitch purl-wise “wyib”.

OK here is the part where I start getting anal. Is there not like a general rule for when you should have the yarn in front or in the back? From my observations, I’d like to say that I “may” have come up with a generalization on how to create chain selvedges, but I’m not sure, so I need your input.

• If you are slipping p-wise wyif, that stitch needs to be knitted on the next row to create a chain loop

• If you are slipping p-wise wyib, that stitch needs to be purled on the next row to create a chain loop

• If you are slipping k-wise (wyib or wyif….I don’t think it matters in this case), that stitch needs to be purled on the next row to create a chain loop

So, there you have it…. from The Boy who Knits. This is the point where I have to just “let go” and let my fellow cyber knitters read my blog and help this obsessive compulsive, anal retentive knitter that I am.

Look, I have my first sock on Paula’s grandbaby. Isn’t she adorable?

I’m finally done with the other pair. I am giving this to Paula, the lady I work with. She will be giving it to one of her grandbabies.

This pair of socks were knitted on DPN size 1 US. I used KnitPicks Sock Garden in Hydrangea. My next will be trying to use the Magic Loop technique.