For the SKA August challenge, finishing WIPs, I excavated a gray version of Embossed Leaves by Mona Schmidt that was cast on in November 2007. Needless to add, it's been a UFO for a long time. The most recent photo of it was taken in January 2008. Here's what the sock looked like then.
It's well-preserved, in the August 25 (2023) proof of sock photo it looks like it scarcely aged a day.
Er, or put another way, there hasn't been much progress on this work in progress in 16 years. Can I finish the pair before the end of the month? To be continued....
Somehow I never did quite summon the necessary enthusiasm for Madness. I mean the fake Internet, do-it-for-the-lulz, March Sock Madness variety and not the real world warring madness types. The latter have a way of draining the joy from everything, rendering the former empty husks. I gathered yarn, printed the qualifying pattern, tried a few color combinations, but advanced no further. Ah well.
Instead of Madness I did a spot of baby knitting. There's nothing like babies and baby knitting to restore a sense of goodness and sanity to the world. This is Watermelon Baby Cardigan by Stitchylinda Designs worked in King Cole Cottonsoft DK. Beautiful pattern, beautiful yarn – I especially love how the yoke increases look like watermelon seeds.
That's better. On to Yarnia Sock Bingo, Summer of Socks, and the new-to-me Supersock World Championship, on Ravelry and on a companion website. Despite its grandiose name, SWC seems reasonable and mellow and I'm hoping to qualify. But, as always, the countdown timer waits for no knitter. Must knit faster.
In the bleak midwinter it may seem callous or bizarre to speak of Internet knitting and pandemic in the same paragraph. But... that is where I am: still here, still pondering ways to checkmate nihilism, still considering the same socks. This time I intend to finish Invitation to the Dance for WIPs Dancing. After so much upheaval, there are two verities: I know where the singleton and the yarn are and it's not a bad thing to dance.
This year I'm trying something new as well – Fiberuary Challenge 2022, which takes place on Instagram, curated by @CreativeCece. I still don't quite get Insta, maybe this will help. At the very least, it will be an impetus to take better photos and maybe it will inspire more frequent posts.
I'm already behindhand with posting, but I'm not going to worry about that. February is too short for worries!
Inspired by Ravellenics WIPs Wrestling, I searched for (and retrieved from under the sofa) a UFO that is this close to being an FO. Half a foot is all that's lacking, literally. Put another way, between the two of them the socks have one-and-a-half feet or are, in literary terms, sesquipedalian.
There's a tale of sadness behind all this. Back in October 2019, a month after bellybuttonknits passed away and Before Covid, I finally started knitting a replacement with this yarn for my beady, tabi-toed Send in the Clowns socks that suffered a double blowout the year before. It felt right: there was a BBK memorial KAL and Clowns is a BBK pattern. But the yarn, lovely Three Irish Girls Adorn Luxe, colorway Big Bang, didn't want to be Clowns. Nor did it want to be Kilauea, another BBK pattern. Simple Skyp just worked better, so Simple Skyp it was.
Progress was rapid – then 2020 happened. That almost sounds like a punch line, or the equivalent of the ??? lacuna in the Profit meme. As in the meme I'm not completely sure how I got from 2019 to 2021 – eventful as 2020 was, some incidents stand out crisply, but the overall sweep of time is fuzzy. A lot of last year was like that. And at some point the UFO sock ended up under the sofa, not exactly lost, more like in need of finding.
The Ravellenics end tomorrow: while I doubt these socks will be finished in time, I don't doubt they will be finished soon thanks to the Ravellenic spirit. So maybe the socks will win no official glory, but seriously, they're socks and we're talking about fake Internet medals.
And just like that, it's August. I'm knitting along for the Ravellenics 2020 2021 on Team BBMF and for Yarnia Sock Bingo, wrassling WIPs and frogging UFOs. As one does in August. To whit...
Mock Sadness by Helle Slente Design, worked in Schachenmeyer Regia Cotton Color, colorway 2426 Tutti Frutti II. The pair is pictured with chocolate stroopwafels because the pattern was the second warm-up for this year's Sock Madness. Technically the FO is a wrassled WIP because I started it in early July for Sock Bingo (with yarn purchased at Yarnia), before the Ravellenics had started. Whatever. It's done, and Ravellenics glory is mine.
The pattern is fun, with a bit o' everything – mirrored cables, faggoting, and a wide picot hem that I swapped out for 2x2 ribbing because the wide hem looks pretty, but in my view is too hot for summer socks. I also subbed a wedge toe for the star toe because my feet are not shaped like pencil points. The yarn reminded me why I usually prefer four-ply cotton fingering to cotton sock yarn for pretty much everything, including socks. At least the pattern repeat on the yarn is consistent.
A different Sock Madness warm-up pattern, How to Tame Your Dragon by Dots Dabbles, that has been languishing since February 2018, got frogged. It's not the pattern, it's not the yarn (Colinette Jitterbug, colorway Tapis) – yet somehow after more than three years I just wasn't feeling the love. I've reconditioned the yarn, of course.
In Ravellenics past, there was a medal for frogging; now there's "only" a laurel. Nonetheless, more Ravellenic glory is mine.
It feels like it's been a long winter's nap – both the nap and the winter, and we're not out of it yet. There's either too much or not enough to say about dreamtime (or nightmaretime), so for now howabout a view of bare trees and winter moonlight?
Ah.
Just this morning I said to myself, "Self, March is right around the corner, isn't it about time to think about registering for Sock Madness? Maybe it's time to have a look at the Ravgroup." Only to find – of course – that registration for SM15 has been going on all month and concludes February 28. Well, I'm glad I didn't miss it; indeed, by SM standards, there's plenty of time to spare. As I still have too many distractions and I'm not feeling hyper-competitive, I plan to ease back into knitting and blogging by joining a mellow team or the cheerleading squad.
Before the madness starts, let me note the last foot of last year, above: a plain sock knit in White Birch Fiber Arts 80/20 merino self-striping, colorway Nothing says screw you like a rainbow. It's the most wonderful long-repeat stripe I've ever knit. When the yarn is this fabulous, it's best to just knit, maybe insert an afterthought heel to keep the stripe pattern lined up, and think of sunshine and rainbows to come.
'Way back whenever, a mere six weeks or so ago, this post started as a Sock Madness post. I had CO the SM14 qualifier on a train somewhere between Chicago and New York and had every intention of competing. Things seemed auspicious: by the most synchronous of synchronicities, the qualifying pattern was Wohin? by the ever-creative Caoua Coffee, a delight of clever technique (gentle readers know how I love technique). Wohin?, a lied in the Schubert song cycle "Die schöne Müllerin" (Op. 25, D. 795), translates to something like Where to?
Little did I suspect that the first week of March was to be the last Before Coronavirus (at least that we currently know of in this region) and the Land of Where To so far has been a place of constantly feeling O.B.E..
One sign of the times is the Times itself – here's a week of headlines for March 16-21, 2020, when reality began to sink in. Ordinarily the New York Times doesn't do full, six-column headlines all that often, so a solid week of them is unsettling all by itself. Then there's the subject of those headlines: the public health crisis and the economic crisis touched off by the novel coronavirus and the disease it causes, covid19, and the leadership crisis in response. So much of grave import has happened that it seems frivolous to note, even on a knitting blog, that there hasn't been much knitting going on at casa Jersey Knitter.
Instead there have been many adjustments big and small, some bewildering in their rapidity and increasing severity. BC, I went to the Philadelphia Flower Show and, AC, I was too occupied to blog about it. Branch Brook Park was closed during cherryblossom season, along with schools and nonessential businesses. (Including malls. In New Jersey.) Spring elections were rescheduled or shifted to vote by mail. Restaurants were limited to take-out or delivery only. Supermarkets were required to limit the number of customers in the store; some placed one-way arrows to direct traffic in the aisles and sneeze guards at the registers; customers were required to wear face masks and gloves – some say food stores should move to curbside pickup and home delivery only. Although online ordering is so swamped, shopping at Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods is by invitation only. I learned about social distancing and flattening the curve and how to wash hands (for at least 20 seconds, with plenty of suds).
With all the adjustments come all the feels. So many feels. Gabrielle Treanor's "3 Stages of Pandemic Response" has it about right, except instead of making steady progress through the stages, I tend to pingpong back and forth between levels.
After all that, I cast on another sock, Waterlily Socks by Sivia Harding. It's got a bit o' everything: beads, small cables, lace. The yarn is Sweet Georgia Tough Love Sock, colorway Sapphire. I've stopped worrying about Where To? It's one small consolation in a world turned up to eleven.
This Epiphany – in some Christian traditions the Day of Kings (el Día de los Reyes) – secular revelation comes not with a star, angels, and shepherds, but by means of a Tweet and Reply. There's the horror, the horror of an imperial, violence-prone presidency on full public display, in 140 characters or less, and the lawful rejoinder. Context here.
This Media Post will serve as a reminder that war powers reside in the Congress under the United States Constitution. And that you should read the War Powers Act. And that you’re not a dictator. https://t.co/VTroMegWv0
— House Foreign Affairs Committee (@HouseForeign) January 5, 2020
The contending assertions also provide a reminder that the religious text for the day plainly calls wise men and women to acts of resistance and civil disobedience against would-be tyrants. When fox-like Herod treacherously demands you play the informant for him, conscience and lucid dreaming will send you home safe by another way. It's not alternative facts, but an alternate road.
One of those alternate paths for me includes the gentle Make Nine Challenge (#MakeNine), explained by blog, Instagram, and Ravelry group. Rather than attempt to Make All the Things and succumb to the pressures of fast fashion, this challenge is a thoughtful, intentionally limited ramble through a year of making. I've been trying to de-clutter, and that really should include my multi-craftual queue, too. So here's my collage and intentions.
1. Make some prayer shawls: maybe knit them, maybe weave them. While the production method may be in question, the current need at Church of the Improv is indisputably urgent. I've never before seen a time such as this. It's easy to feel anxious and overwhelmed.
3. Reduce the number of UFO socks, including Singular Sensation Socks. This could easily turn into a deep dive into a rabbit hole all by itself. To set some parameters, let me note the current number of Singular Sensations is 11; the lowest number is 7, achieved in 2011, 2012, 2014, and 2016; the highest number is 12, a dubious achievement of 2009.
4. Sew a T-shirt or two. I haven't done any garment sewing in a long, long, long time and would like to get back into it, not least because I love wearing tees, inventory is running low, and I'm increasingly dissatisfied with storebought. Although I have a quibble... I prefer the finished look of facings, but patterns with bias binding would seem to be the current style, such as the knit 100 Acts of Sewing: Shirt No. 2 or the woven Grainline Studio Scout Tee, with sleeve variations. Perhaps more research is needed.
5. Free square, project to be determined. Of course there's a free square. There are many contenders for the empty space – Sock Madness, Tour de Fleece, and the Tokyo Ravellenics come readily to mind – but I want to hold it open for a while.
6. Sew some project and shopping bags, such as Grainline Studio Stowe Bag. I'm still trying to reduce my use of plastic.
7. Knit a Churchmouse Yarns and Teas Swingy Linen Skirt. I have the pattern, and yarn purchased for Camp Loopy 2017 (just when the most recent round of chaos started) and re-purposed in 2018. I haven't had the requisite time to knit, but I hope to remedy that this year.
9. Can some things – apricot or peach jam, maybe; tomato jam, definitely; maybe dilly beans or pickled nasturtium pods; hopefully some cherries. Lately I've repeatedly missed cherry season because of too much travel. Sigh. The list could go on and on, but in the spirit of Make Nine, there's no pressure (har) to can All The Things.
I'm looking forward to learning lots of good ancillary things too. For example, that's my first photo collage above (yay, me) and I hope to become more proficient on Instagram, the format of which just boggles me. So here goes, and good luck to everyone Making Nine.
Happy New Year! May it be filled with that 20/20 clarity... and fancy doughnuts!
It's going to be a doozy of a year, methinks. I was feeling grouchy and stressed at the close of 2019, and was looking forward to some peace and quiet for at least one day. But, the new year had scarcely dawned when a flock of urgent and/or trolling messages landed in my inbox. Argh.
So. Rather than start a first foot this year, I'm simply going to continue on last year's first foot (never finished), Invitation to the Dance by Caoua Coffee. It's a lovely pattern that deserves better attentiveness, and I look forward to reducing the number of UFOs buzzing around Area 151. Besides, I just joined the Team 2020 Sew My Wardrobe sew-along – another reason to limit and/or reduce knitting projects.
At the close of the year, it's indicative what sort of year it's been that my sole blogpost for December is the year-end retrospective. Sigh.
One of the lingering puzzles from 2018 is the number of strident objections, all from non-knitters, to the annual display of the Singleton Socks of Shame. There's the Tone Police and the Nonbinary Sock Police, and yet I'm the judge-y one, if you please. Huh. Well, never let it be said that I can't learn new things. So, behold, my Singular Sensation Socks, now with fairy lights!
That's zero socks down from the fairy line, one up, for a total of 11 Singular Sensation Socks. That's one less than the most ever, and more importantly negative progress. The strenuous effort of running as fast as one can merely to stay in one place could be a metaphor of my year. It would seem the experience of Waterlicht may have been more apt than I realized at the time.
The crafty year started so promisingly: with a Food in Jars can-along and Sock Madness. The can-along limped along, although I canned a bit more than is recorded on the blog. Last year I discovered that having a goodly supply of tomato jam is a necessity during the long dearth of winter, so a goodly supply was canned. That's no small consolation now that winter is upon us. As for Sock Madness, I advanced to Round 2 – about as far as usual, for the usual reason (too much busyness). But I have a pair of the qualifier (Smock Madness), Round 1 (Demogorgon's Lair), and Round 2 (Echoes) socks, and a singleton Round 3 (Inky Madness). It's no coincidence that I became truly, nuttily busy about the same time I neglected to take a picture of the singleton – so much so, I forgot about it until I started this year-end retrospective. I even forgot to include it in the Singular Sensation class photo. Yipes.
The rest of the year galloped by in an unseemly way. There was a failed attempt to participate in Camp Loopy, which at least added to my stash. I trialed a new tomato variety, Rutgers 250, side-by-side with the exemplar of Jersey tomatoes, Rutgers. As promised, in a Jersey garden Rutgers 250 matures a bit more slowly than Rutgers, resists more diseases, and the developing fruits are paler green and flatter than Rutgers, which tend to be pointy, perhaps their only weakness. When it comes to taste, though, I prefer the classic rich, sweet-acid flavor of the older variety.
Ah, summer.
In the coming year I anticipate a need to tie up some loose ends from this year, then maybe at last I can ease into a less hectic pace. Maybe there will still be travel, but voluntary and for pleasure rather than reactive and out of necessity. Blogging suffered this year, and I hope to post more regularly, or not – in any case without the freight of frustrated expectation. Less stress would be good. I don't really have goals in the usual sense, a list of boxes to check off. Instead I'm talking about being free, with the clarity of vision and purpose that 20/20 might imply. May it be so, gentle readers, and may your New Year be happy, healthy, and prosperous!
Happy Thanksgiving weekend! I thought I'd made the slow return from the Land of Too Much Travel and was pretty much Back, but perhaps not completely. It's entirely possible, I've found, for my body to occupy one space and my head (or whatever it is that dreams up and posts blog posts) another. For example, almost post-factum I was reminded by Carole's self-care post that for many bloggers November is NaBloPoMo, the goal being to blogpost (at least) once a day for a month. Gentle readers, aside from the meta-ness of a reminder in a self-care post, in a previous life I knew that, yet in this life it's the last day of November and this is "only" my second post of the month. Sigh. No, not really Sigh. Even in a previous life I've never participated in NaBloPoMo; for me the task is shedding NaBloPoMo FOMO. Er, by posting a confessional of sorts... on the last day.
Let me atone move along with "Everything to Lose," a powerful spoken word poem by Wyn Wylie (he/him) as Pattie Gonia (she/her) about the plastic crisis, a particularly dreadful part of our climate emergency.
(For gentle readers interested in more, there's also a compelling companion documentary that shows Wyn Wylie doing the research in Hawai'i, a beach clean up with Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii, and how designer Angela Luna made the dresses from found objects – plastic fishing nets hung up on the reef, single-use plastic bags floating in the ocean, and bright, brittle bits of plastic found on the beach.)
Plastic reduction has been a public goal of my knitblogging life pretty much since Year One, more than 10 years ago. Not tremendously successfully, despite concern, intermittent effort, and occasional blogposts. It would seem I'm in good company: the township is finally banning single-use plastic bags, although with many reasonable exceptions for small businesses. Even that small step has been difficult, not least because of the perceived imbalance between the many immediate benefits of plastic and its dreadful long-term impacts. A throw-away culture depends upon an Away to throw on, but it turns out there is no Away, not really, just different headspace.
So this Thanksgiving weekend I'm here, if not quite Back, and pondering the state of Away, and knitting a bit (and marveling at how frequently I used to blogpost). I have a singleton sock, Simple Skyp, to show off. While it's DNF on time for SKA, that's OK. I've been Away, and am still coming home.
This post has been evolving a while. When I started writing about my weekend it was the season when the walls between worlds grown thin, and maybe some walls between nations, too. Ahem. To celebrate mark the date, there even was a Halloween sun, courtesy the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Roundabout Exit 151 a bit more Halloween sun would have been welcome – Halloween was warm, windy, and rainy. I had planned to test a survey which claims the most popular Halloween candy in NJ is Skittles. Knock me over with a feather, I like chocolate. But, not wanting to run afoul of the generational friction of ok boomer and mindful of slave-free chocolate concerns, I gave Skittles a try on the sparse handful of trick-or-treaters who braved the balmy storm. Within the small sample size, it would seem it's true, Skittles were very well received. Huh.
After the storm and clean up, I hauled our last TV with a picture tube to the recycling center. The attendant suggested I was nuts for wanting to take a photo (and he didn't want to be in it), but it seemed important to document the occasion. Farewell, faithful TV!
As for knitting, all I got to show is this Pumpkin Socks singleton. I'm DNF for September/October SKA and feel rather indifferent about that, given everything else that's been going on. And while I'm concerned about it becoming a Singleton Sock of Shame, perhaps there's no danger – some gentle readers (who don't themselves knit) find the term objectionable and stifling, and have had the temerity to demand I find better terminology. Hm....
Moving right along... For runners, it was NY Marathon weekend, of course. As all New Yorkers well know, it's the weekend when the city is, er, overrun with fleet pedestrians and traffic closures. So perhaps it was only fitting that the president, having declared himself no longer a New Yorker (for whatever good that does), decided to snarl traffic further by attending a mixed martial arts card at Madison Square Garden, where his reception inside and out was decidedly mixed. This on top of his Game 5 reception and followed by an off-year Election Day and some of the crowd at a Trump rally in Monroe, Louisiana leaving early.
No doubt about it, the times are a-changing, winter is coming, and there's snow in the forecast.
It's taken almost all of October to find the right pattern for this lovely sock yarn, and I'm still not completely convinced, but for SKA October/November purposes, here goes: a repeat of Simple Skyp Sock by Adrienne Ku, with a beaded CO in memory of Adrienne Fong aka bellybuttonknits.
The yarn, Three Irish Girls Adorn Luxe, colorway Big Bang, is so beautifully cosmic, very nice, although the yarn is not quite as sproingy as I prefer. As part of the memorial sock-along tribute to BBK, I tried knitting up a replacement for my worn tabi-toed Send in the Clowns, didn't like it. Tried Kilauea, didn't like that either. Then I traveled too much, liked that some but didn't like the excess, and I saw Waterlicht, an immersive laser light installation in Manhattan.
My poor digicam was not up to the task of capturing the experience, and when I left I found myself feeling oddly rested yet similarly without words to describe it. The installation was lovely, numinous, wheelchair and family friendly, and well done – one never felt crowded or rushed, there were nice places to sit and contemplate, and helpful ushers with glow sticks to show the way. For all that, I overheard a young art critic sagely opine, "This is very cool, but also kind of boring." Well, the line to get in eventually wrapped around three sides of a city block. What I liked best, I think, was how one's sense of the city never really went away.
The sense of rising waters also never quite goes away. So many coastal communities along the Eastern seaboard are experiencing an increase in sunny day flooding, or street flooding from normal tidal action, not caused by unusually powerful storms or even king tides. Indeed, the projections suggest what have been the worst inundations in past will soon simply be the new normal, most of the time. Having slogged through the aftermath of hurricanes and nor'easters and bomb cyclones, even as Western states experiences worse and worse fire seasons, I'm looking for solutions. Of course it's ironic I've been traveling too much when my perennial favorite solution is carbon avoidance, especially transit avoided carbon, but one has to start somewhere.
Oh hai. I've been traveling too much, knitting (and canning and blogging) too little. Some of the travel has been very pleasant, some less so. Here's some of the pleasant.
Ahh.
Too little knitting is not no knitting, of course. Here's a Pumpkin Sock interposing itself in the sculpture When Anthony Met Stanton by Ted Aub, that depicts Amelia Bloomer (you can barely see her loose trousers, known as bloomers) introducing Susan B. Anthony of Rochester to Elizabeth Cady Stanton of Seneca Falls. The statues are life-sized – it's a bit of a surprise how tiny such looming figures were. And surely gentle readers all know what happened in Seneca Falls, New York, the 1848 Women's Rights Convention, re-enacted annually in July. Something to consider if you're in the Finger Lakes region. (I can't believe I'm nattering on about travel, when I've been traveling too much as it is.)
Next year marks the centennial of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, or (white) women's suffrage. Much ink has been shed about the racism baked into the women's rights movement, and the differences and intersections between race and gender. I have some thoughts on such matters, of course, but right now I'm going to rest (not quit) and ramble on.
And now it's September. Rather than bemoan all I did NOT accomplish this summer, I decided to make an effort to get ahead of the curve and cast on Pumpkin Socks by Nicole Simmons in Claudia Hand Painted, colorway Ink and some Trekking leftover from Ekornsokkene. It's a rather, um, festive look for the second week of September, but with my record of UFOs this year I need as much of a head start as possible. Thus: premature pumpkin spice jokes, Halloween rush jokes – you are banishèd! Begone!
So. I joined the Camp Loopy knit-along. This year's theme is outer space, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing on July 20, 1969, and blast-off was June 1. Which may not be the wisest move – joining, that is, not the choice of theme or the start date (or believing the Moon landing was real) – as my last blog post was ::cough:: eight weeks ago... and I haven't yet cast on. It's the usual, too much travel.
So. While I remedy both regrettable states of affairs, howabout a photo of the Moon, taken last night because I couldn't get an image of Jupiter and its moons, which were in opposition on Monday. It's handheld because the tripod had one leg ripped clean off during a chaotic night shoot in February. The damage is beyond duct tape, sigh. Anyway, I love how the lunar terminator, the divide between bright and dark, highlights the craters in light and shadow.
Sock Madness Round 7, the round of champions, starts tomorrow. I dropped out after Round 2 for the usual reasons, although I made scanty progress on the Round 3 sock, inky madness by Susan Gehringer. And I want to knit the Round 4 sock, Canon by Caoua Coffee and the Round 6 pattern, Swirlagon Socks by Kirsten Hall. So many patterns, so little time!
Somehow I got out of sync with the FIJ Challenge monthly challenges, too. June is jam month, so in the time remaining I'll try to put up some old favorites and try a new recipe if I can manage it. The big discovery from last year was tomato jam and I want to put up mass quantities for the lean times – last year's hoard was barely sufficient! But of course it's not tomato time yet and (of course) I have yet more travel scheduled. Well, the journey of a thousand miles starts with consulting a lot of maps.
Having finished the Sock Madness Round Two sock on time, I advance! I'm quite pleased, both with the socks and because I really wanted to get beyond Round One. I have a feeling I may not get beyond Round Two, but that's OK, I just wanted to progress beyond Round One.
The socks are Echoes by Liz Harris, worked in red Fortissima and white Sock-Ease. While I do admire stranded colorwork, I'm not a big fan of socks with stranded colorwork all over because it's always a struggle to pull them over my heels. But there are the happy exceptions. On these socks, I particularly like the tumbling hourglass motif, the way the stitch pattern remains coherent at the end-of-round jog, and the nice framing stitch that keeps the gusset decreases tidy. Clearly a thoughtful, technically excellent design. The yarns are recycled from two other projects, dating from 2008 and 2012, and I'm pleased they could finally be reclaimed and put to use. They work well together, I think.
The striking stitch pattern seemed vaguely heraldic to me, and I decided I wanted the MC (red) yarn dominant over the CC (white) yarn. It's more usual to have the CC dominant, but I like the results (and of course have to show them off). Here's the leg stranding.
Because I was speed-knitting, sometimes often late at night, and this week riveted by the news from Paris, sometimes I accidentally reversed the yarn dominance, which is easy to see on the wrong side of the pinstripe sole. (See the red lines among the white?) On some projects I'd feel a compulsion to tink back and fix that, but in this case I uncharacterically shrugged and knit on! For gentle readers unfamiliar with the concept of yarn dominance (some prefer the term color dominance), here's two helpfulexplainers.
Meanwhile, my computer migration is mostly done, but instead of the unalloyed joy of having a fast new computer I have the odd feeling that for a user like me peak utility has come and gone and, like AutoCorrect, future innovations are frequently going to be annoyances. (Although it might be nice to have a car that parallel parks itself.) As if to underscore that, when I was posting photos of Echoes to my Ravelry project page, a requirement for advancing in Sock Madness, the link from Flickr to Ravelry malfunctioned. The workaround I used was acceptable, obvs, but argh.
For observant Christians, today is the pause before the deep dive that is the culmination of Holy Week: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter. For others, maybe there's the hope of landing an invitation to an Easter feast, which this food writer dubs "Spring Thanksgiving." While that's a novel notion to me, this year I'm going to go with it.
The signs are everywhere – spring is springing roundabout Exit 151! In celebration, I took my singleton Echoes by Liz Harris, the Sock Madness second round sock, to Branch Brook Park. I never tire of the annual show of cherry blossoms. The sock is pretty nice, too. (That's my sock, but not my hand.)
Last weekend the indubitable sign of spring was NJ Wool Walk. Pressed for time as I've been, I contented myself with a quick outing to Yarnia, where I filled a small basket with some yarn and other necessities (not shown) and some swag that came with the purchase (below). I got a notions bundle. I do love me some knitting swag. When unwound, the pink mini ball of yarn contained a coupon for 15% off a future purchase.
This weekend, given the prevalence of puffy buds on the trees and if the mild spring weather continues, I'd say it will be peak bloom in Branch Brook Park.
For those unacquainted with the technical terms for cherry blossom bloom stages, here's an illustrated primer (yes, such things exist!). Or in the "Beauty is truth" spirit, maybe it's enough to know that puffy buds = promise of beauty imminent. If you can't make it in person, there's always Branch Brook Park cam. And not to worry, there's plenty of late-blooming cherry trees, mainly with very showy double-ruffled magenta flowers, to come.
It's typical of Sock Madness that while I hitherto did not know what a demogorgon is, I speed-knit a pair of socks called Demogorgon's Lair by Dots Dabbles, trusting that when the madness passes, I (among thousands of other hapless sock knitters) will not have reason to wail, "What have I done???"
The pattern dropped while I was traveling, of course. Fortunately, I had stuffed the equivalent of the contents of a small yarn shop in my luggage... except for a crochet hook. So while I had ample choices of yarn, of course the pattern calls for a crochet hook to work the Magic Circle Cast On (aka Emily Ocker's CO). Undeterred and working with what else was on hand – a bent paperclip, a ballpoint pen, and some masking tape – I was soon knitting along using one of my favorite sock yarns, Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, colorway 907 Envy in the old put-up.
Charmingly (or perhaps appropriately, I know not), Demogorgon the sock has different left and right legs. To comply with Sock Madness regs, I dutifully posted photos of the fronts of the socks. Thanks to the different leg patterns, to reach the same length the left leg has five pattern repeats, the right leg seven.
I'd used the left leg lace pattern before for three pairs of shortie socks that also are knit in Shepherd Sock. They're shortie socks to make the most one skein of the old put-up. The oldest pair pre-date Ravelry; all're on the blog here, here, and here.
As Kathy noted, to some eyes the toes and heels of the Demogorgon resemble bewbs and nips. My Frankenfeet can be hard to fit and, sure enough, while the bewbs fit OK, the nips will need reknitting. When I have more time (har!).
It's said the demogorgon lives in a parallel dimension public library (?), which I suppose means my Frankenfeet live in a library. That doesn't sound too bad. The sock Demogorgon's Lair is an inventive and entertaining knit – even more meaningful to members of the fandom, no doubt. For my part, I'm happy to advance to Round 2. It looks like I'll again be traveling when the pattern drops, so I'm stocking my mobile yarn shop accordingly.
Now I'm knitting along for the 2022 Winter Ravellenics on Team BBMF and registered for Sock Madness 16, to commence next month. Some things don't change much. In the U.S. we're starting Year Three of the coronavirus pandemic. The official death toll is over 900,000 – it's estimated 100,000 of those deaths were added in the eight weeks since December 12 due to the Omicron variant of the virus. No surprise, Thanksgiving and Christmas were difficult. And January brought a 5-slice French toast alert. Well, so much for catching up, on to February.
As one does in August. To whit...
Which may not be the wisest move – joining, that is, not the choice of theme or the start date (or believing the Moon landing was real) – as my last blog post was ::cough:: eight weeks ago... and I haven't yet cast on. It's the usual, too much travel.
