Month: April 2004 Page 1 of 2

I feel like Goldilocks. This one is too big, and this one is too small. Sigh.

2 sailing socks for Martin (no, I haven’t finished the second sock for either yet). The green one is made from Mountain Colors Bearfoot. (I love this sock yarn, by the way. It’s wool, mohair, and nylon. It should wear very well.) It’s made toe up, so I really don’t have an excuse. The sock is 1″ too long for Martin’s foot. I don’t know what happened except that the short row heel is 3.5″ long, and I only planned for 2.5″. This has never happened to me before.

And I was down with the crud during the past 5 days. I was not in the mood to deal with little tiny needles, which tossed the second sock and my new spring T out the window. So, I picked up Hot Foot from The Village Spinning and Weaving Shop and my Brittany #2 needles. It’s a superwash merino yarn — about DK weight. This one is top down, using Lucy Neatby’s garter stitch short row heel. I think I was freaking out over how large the last sock was and started decreasing for the toe a bit too early. And it’s about 1/4″ too short. Actually, I remeasured the toe. It’s only 2.25″ instead of 2.5″, so there’s my 1/4″.

Sigh. I’ll have to rip both out and I’m not looking forward to it.

But they look nice, don’t they? Both have lovely hand. And both will be lovely sailing socks. Unfortunately, to comply with the US Sailing recommendations (they are really stressing it this year), Martin won’t be able to wear open toed sailing sandles while teaching. Only the cuffs will show about his new sailing shoes. And it’ll be too warm to wear when we go to the British Virgin Islands this summer. But they are lovely cuffs. Besides, there will be cruise outs that he can wear them to between now and then.

I walked into the LYS at lunch yesterday for one ball of
black Lambs Pride and walked out with 5 balls of yarn.

They had a new kind of thick and thin yarn called Salsa
from Germany which I paired with a cotton cord for an
experiment in scribble lace. I am not fond of working on
large needles (15), but the results are worth the effort.
Now I have to go back to LYS to buy 3 more balls so my
scarf can become a stole.

On the outbound flight from LAX to Kona, a lady on the plane
had a copy of Debble New’s book, ‘Unexpected Knitting’.
The projects are a bit more involved than I would usually
undertake, but scribble lace looked doable. You knit
3 rows of thread or thin cotton cord and then 1 row of
a thick yarn in stockinette stitch on large needles. The
result looks like cobwebby lace.

I began with three armspans of the thick yarn, made a slip
knot, and then did a long tail cast-on until I had only 4″ left.
Then I knit 3 rows with the thin cotton cord, 1 row with the
thick n thin wool… Of course, this will only work with circular
needles.

(3 armspans should be enough yarn to cast on for something
one armspan long, slightly more or less depending on needle
size. Email me for the formula I worked out. But remember,
I was a math major in college.)