Sock Off

I say this every year, but this year I mean it: this is the Summer of Socks for me. A lot of my existing socks have been around for five or more years now (hand-made socks lasting longer and all), and some of them are worn down to the nylon at the toes. I never seem to wear out hand-knit heels, just the toes. I know I could darn them, but that wouldn't reduce my yarn stash as quickly and the truth is I'm not very good at darning toe points. Under the ball of the foot or elsewhere on the sole, yes, but not right at the end where all the decreases are.

New socks it is, then — about the only wool knitting that's bearable in the summer.

Noro sock yarn:

I'm glad I bought my yarn at The Purple Purl, because the ever-cool-and-helpful Jennifer advised that I should go down a few needle sizes to get the yarn to work — 2.25mm instead of my usual 2.75mm. (Note to those who don't knit fine yarn: at this weight, half a millimetre makes a big difference). Jennifer said she had cast on the same number of stitches as usual, though, so I tried that for mine, and encountered one of those "weird gauge things" that show up from time to time. Apparently the smaller needle size only affected the row gauge, not the stitch gauge — the socks are the same width as the Lana Grossa socks I was making at the same time, but the cuffs and heel are shorter. Just one of those things, I guess.

Anyways, Jennifer's advice was excellent as usual, because the smaller needles make a smooth, firm fabric. The Noro is a loosely-spun single-ply, just like their their thicker wool yarns, so it needs to be shown who's boss. Just like the other yarn, too, the sock yarn can be a bit "breaky" in places, but it also spit-splices well, so it's only a minor annoyance instead of a major setback (so long as you're not squeamish about spit, anyhow). I'm glad they put some nylon in it to make it proper sock yarn, as opposed to "artisan" stuff that is beautiful to knit with but wears out in about a week.



Lana Grossa sock yarn:

This is the finished version of the sock I started during the storytelling festival I blogged about a few posts back. It's just nice, well-behaved, proper sock yarn with good striping and great texture. See how the colours matched up again after I finished the heel shaping? I love it when that happens. I find the European brands that offer self-striping all tend to do that — they must plan out their stripe lengths so that they will work with an average-size adult sock. As a bonus, my stripes ended in the colourway about where they began (100g skein, so two socks per ball), so my second sock will approximately match the first one and I didn't even have to trim away any yarn!



The Noro sock yarn is also a 100g ball, and those socks won't match — the colours will be shifted about one stripe. Since the Noro has long repeats and has that lovely gradual transition between colours, I think that will be a benefit, not a drawback.

I'm looking forward to wearing both these pairs next winter. More immediately, I'm looking forward to getting the mates to each of these done so I can finish the cotton/wool socks I started two summers ago (oops) and try out the ball of Tofutsi I got when Gina was here. The other Lana Grossa and the Austermann moisturised wool yarn should come first, though, to take advantage of this cooler spring weather we're having.

Bigger is better?

I saw these giant-size pomegranates in my local supermarket the other day and couldn't resist buying one (plus a regular-size grapefruit for scale), just for the sheer freak factor and the photo op. It was easily twice the size of the last one I bought.

That was size. What about taste?

You guessed it. I used a quarter of the pomegranate and half the grapefruit to make a pomegranate, grapefruit, and salmon salad for dinner tonight. The pomegranate seeds were the size of corn kernels — and were almost completely tasteless. Fortunately, the grapefruit was a good one, so at least I had some acidity to balance off the salmon and the olive oil.

Once again size and taste turn out to be incompatible. The thing is, how do we manage to tell the supermarkets that?

A Waffle-less Weekend

Last weekend I had the ever-effervescent Gina stay with me for a weekend yarn crawl. Beryl and I picked her up from the airport on Friday night after a brief, unplanned tour of Malton (lesson learned: if you're ever driving to Pearson airport from downtown, get in the right lane on the 427 as soon as you get past the 401). Saturday morning we ate breakfast at The Purple Purl, visited Americo and Romni, then wound up at Lettuce Knit. Gina stayed in the shop to check out yarn while Beryl and I scavenged Kensington Market to get food for the evening's barbequeue.

On Sunday we had brunch at Boom on St. Clair and then yarn shopped at In the Loop.

Gina did well on her stash enhancement. I said the only thing I wanted to buy was some Noro sock yarn. Which I did. I also got some other interesting sock yarns — more about them in future posts as I use them up.

Despite constant mention of them, we never did have any waffles. Come to think of it, I'm not sure anyone really wanted any.

Gina was kind and generous enough to give me these amazing things in the photo at the top, all made by artisans in and around Calgary. That's mercerised 3-ply-weight yarn — the idea is that the green yarn is for socks with the blue as heel and toe yarn, but I'm more inclined to make mittens from it. The soap with the star motif is made with ostrich oil, and the mug is stoneware (and has been much used in the last few days for the drinking of tea).

So you can see why I haven't been doing much writing lately. Expect the next few posts to be about sock-knitting.

DIY for everything!

Sometimes I swear I'd be happier on a commune somewhere in a forest or a desert, with just an excellent internet connection and decent mail service to keep us in touch with the outside world.

Either that, or I'm just too picky for a world where we're encouraged to make the mass market, one-size-fits-all choice.

I recently checked out this Nivea eye cream, more for the part about hiding shadows (which I always have, no matter how much sleep I get) than for the spokesmodel dancing around in her PJs during the TV ad. It's lovely stuff, but I keep thinking, "This little 14g jar cost as much to buy as it does to make 750g of day cream at home." Before this venture back into commercial preparations, I'd been using the home-made day cream under my eyes for over a year, and that part of my face isn't any more wrinkly than when I started.

So, I've been thinking. What if I took my Froosh day cream recipe and added some reflective agents? If it doesn't work, I'll be out $10 of ingredients (with the reflective agents, maybe $12-$15) and 45 minutes. That's not any worse than walking out on a bad movie.

The only really bad part is that 250g of cream used on my entire face lasts over a year, so 750g... eh well, I have great friends who are happy to get free day cream.

knitting and listening

Last Sunday I went to a story-telling festival at Harbourfront (see my main blog for details), and decided there was no way I was going to be able to sit still without some knitting. It's not that I expected the telling to be bad; I had high expectations based on what friends who had been previous years had said, and I wasn't disappointed. But I know me, and I know it was either knit or grind my teeth. For someone who had a reputation as being patient and quiet as a child, I've never been able to sit still well. I think I just learned to cope early on.

I added to my list of things to work on because I couldn't find the pair of socks I already had on the go [sigh]. On the other hand, this was the next pair of socks I was going to work on anyhow, so in a way it's all good (and more stash reduction!). The yarn is some Lana Grossa self-striping stuff my mum got me last time she was back home in Holland.

Mystery solved -- mittens lost

I just became self-employed in the past year. That means that last week I took all my envelopes of receipts, remittances, and government forms to my new accountant (he actually has lots of experience, but he's new to me).

The conundrum was that I needed a bag to put all my envelopes of papers into. It's a tough call -- you don't want to use a bag you're going to need, but you don't want to show up with a bag that looks stupid, either.

I duly dug around in my Box of Bags, and discovered a plain black messenger bag I hadn't looked at in a while. Wow, I thought to myself, this is in good shape. I should start using it again. I remembered that I used to over-fill it and kill my shoulder with the weight, but the bag was in great shape -- just needed some brushing down.


I opened it up to check if I'd left anything inside, and discovered a dark grey pair of hand-made mittens. Perfect! I'm constantly losing/ruining mittens, and the ones I made this year were crap because I was too lazy to dig up the pattern I'd been using since I was twelve years old and I screwed up the thumb shaping (in different ways on each mitten). So I tried the newly-discovered ones on, figuring I could put them away with my other winter things and be ahead of the game for once next winter. It was also nice to find this pair again, because I remembered losing them, and got the satisfaction of that "A-ha!" moment when what was lost becomes found again.

There was only one problem.

Moths had found the left one before I had.

Stash reduction

Last Saturday I gave a Rubbermaid chest-of-drawers to a friend. It was stuck in one of my closets; I didn't need it.

Yarn doesn't work that way with me. Nor does thread, buttons, beads, canvas, or anything else you can make something out of. The Oma who taught me how to knit always told me never to give yarn away, and I find that, except on rare occasions, I really can't. Make something and then give it away, sure, but not the raw product, not unless it's going to stay in the family.

So it works like this: if you know me, you know that I always have a perfectly silly amount of projects on the go. I've decided to knock them off in short-term plans. The main goal is to reduce stash.

Here, for instance, are the short-term knitting plans:

• scribble lace jacket from the Debbie New Unexpected Knitting book: 100% stash. Unfortunately, it doesn't take much yarn.


• birthday presents for a friend of mine (already late, but just wait on the photos for when they're done!). I still have the crazy idea I can do these this week and then post them to her on Saturday.


• crocheted plastic shopping bags from Canadian Living -- despite carrying around a reusable shopping bag everywhere, I still have tons of plastic bags.

The name of the game is to avoid reverse stash reduction. That's when you start something to reduce stash, and think to yourself, "That's great! I just need to buy ------- to finish it, and I'll use up all this stuff!" Then you wind up buying more than you use up.


This happened recently to me with a necklace and earrings set I made (sorry about the crappy photo -- the colours are much better in real life). I love how they turned out, but I wound up two vials of seed beads and assorted 4mm beads up in stash when it was supposed to be going down. I'm going to make a bracelet to match and another necklace of a different pattern, just to use up some more beads. It helps that I like jewelry, but hopefully you see the forces at work here.

The big questions are: how do we DIY without turning into the consumers we were at least partly hoping to not be? DIY is supposed to be about getting it your own way and (hopefully) saving some money by making something better than you can afford ready-made -- how did it get to be about buying more stuff?