What the hey?

I've been working on yet another pair of socks (surprise!), using the "Foxfire" master pattern from Cat Bordhi's New Pathway for Sock Knitters.

This is a toe-up with a flap heel; the stitches that form the gusset increases are scattered randomly throughout the non-instep side of the sock. Bordhi's idea is that it's possible to place the gusset increases pretty much anywhere on the foot section, and she seems to be onto something. Her practices of starting the increases a bit earlier, and adding stitches every three rows instead of the more usual every other row, result in a very foot-fitting sock.

She uses a rather complicated system of "Master Numbers," which you either determine beforehand or work out as you go:

• A = stitches-per-inch gauge
• B = foot length
• C = midfoot circumference
• D = midfoot stitch count
• E = length of first section of a toe-up sock

...and so on, all the way up to J, the "custom instep adjustment number."

Which is all well and good, but I've just run into a bit of a snag on Sock 2. I dutifully filled in all my Master Numbers, and have followed them as I work both socks. As I worked, I sort of thought, "Hmm, this second sock looks a tiny bit different. Wonder why?"

But I checked and rechecked my numbers, and it all seemed good, so I figured it must be my imagination. (Have you ever noticed that when you do something by the rules, you're far less likely to believe the evidence of your own eyes? Yeah, me too.)

But now that I'm past the heel and about halfway up the ankle, I decided to do a try-on. (Why did I wait so long? See remarks re. following the rules, above.) I can't pretend any longer.

Sock 2 is definitely bigger than its mate. Definitely.

As in, Sock 1 fits like a dream, while Sock 2 fits like a burlap sack.

What to do? For starters, I see some frogging in my future. And as I work Sock 2.1, I'll use the vaunted Master Numbers to the best of my ability, but you can bet I'll be checking obsessively to be sure 2.1 doesn't start to outstrip its twin.

I'll keep you posted.

Mahatma and me

It's been a bit of a day today.

Not a completely horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad day -- I still have all my limbs intact and a roof over my head and coffee in my mug -- but just one of those days when I find myself wishing that people who sell their services as writers could actually, well, you know...write. As I struggled to transform something that I can only characterize as "gibberish with punctuation" into readable text, I found myself wishing very bad things upon its original author.

Kids, if you're thinking of taking up editing as a career, I have one word for you: don't.

Sure, you might think it's a lark, slashing red lines through someone else's writing, imposing your editorial will upon anyone unfortunate enough to cross your path; you might like the idea of being the slasher rather than the slashee (as one so often is in high school or university). Also, it's kind of fun to write style guides and such, pretending to be an August Authority on Language. Yeah, whatever.

Here's the grisly truth: while editors do get to make the rules (well, some do -- me, for example) and inflict them on others, they also have to read some of the most godawful atrocious attempts at written communication...and then they must somehow turn them into glistening prose. And some days that can be enough to make my brain leak out through my eye sockets.

The other hazard, of course, is that when you make a rule, you don't get to apply it capriciously. You have to be on the alert for infractions at all times. It's your job to be a professional nit-picker, and a grouch besides. It's very tiring.

About mid-afternoon today, when I just couldn't take it any more, I saved my file (always a wise plan, don't ask me how I know) and went in search of my spindle. Then I took a 15-minute break, just me and my merino-silk laceweight.

I read somewhere that Mahatma Gandhi was a passionate spinner, who recommended that everyone should spin thread daily as a form of spiritual renewal.

I'm certanly no Gandhi (although he and I do share a birthday), but as I watched my tiny spindle bob and dance in the sunlight, the throbbing in my head began to ease, and I began to feel like I might actually survive the day. My Patience Quotient started to inch up from -10 to almost zero, and I decided to spare the writer's life after all.

It's a miracle, I tell you.

And in our "Spurious Products" department...

My grandmother, whose story I told here in abridged form a couple of weeks back, was all about the new, the bright, the shiny, the modern.

She was right at home in the Swingin' Sixties, an era when new technologies were sprouting up like mushrooms after a long drizzle. And she was the first to snap up any innovative, wacky, or just plain weird product that caught her eye.

If it was pink, her favourite colour, so much the better; and if it was hot pink...well, honestly? Who can pass up screaming radioactive pink in semi-wearable form? Not Nana, that's for sure.

That's why my sister and I were the first kids on our block to wear paper dresses. Disposable clothing! You can wear them and toss them in the garbage! You don't have to hem them -- you just cut the hem with pinking shears, and you're done! And best of all, they only cost a dollar! Why, that's less than you'd spend on dry cleaning a cloth dress.

Ours were hot pink, shapeless shifts in a wild paisley print; they tied at the shoulders with something resembling raffia, and they were indeed made of paper -- they felt like thick paper towels, and made a crinkly swishy noise when we walked. They lasted about three wearings, and then they were gone. But never forgotten.

Then there was Shake-a-Pudd'n -- a powdered pudding mix that you poured into a plastic container, filled with milk, and then shook like mad, until it magically turned into pudding. This was a Nana stand-by -- she kept boxes of the stuff in her overstuffed kitchen cupboard, and it was always a huge treat to make, shake, and eat.

So yesterday when I found this while grocery shopping, how could I resist? It has "Nana Bait" written all over it. It's "fast, easy, and fun for the whole family"! It "makes breakfast a blast"! and best of all, it's certified organic!

(Oh, plus it has a totally rockin' jingle.)

En pointe

Class, today's topic will be toes. Sock toes, that is.

If you're like me (by which I mean impatient), you treat the toe of a top-down sock as a necessary but not much-loved afterthought -- it's just this thing you have to get through to get the damn sock finished, so you can either a) start the next one, or b) put the finished pair on and parade around the house showing them to anyone who hasn't already expired from the boredom of listening to you go on and on about your fabulous socks.

Until recently I didn't think a whole lot about toes, but that's begun to change. I've been making Tiina Seppala's beautiful Kalajoki socks -- top-down, with a sinuous winding river pattern that twists its way from the cuff all the way down to the anatomical toe.

The what? You heard me: it's an anatomical toe.

Think about it: when your toes are in their nekkid state, they don't form a perfectly symmetrical half-moon shape, do they? Mine certainly don't. My big toe is, well, big; and my second toe is longer than the big one by a good half-centimeter. The other three form a gentle slope down to the outer edge of my foot.

Now, your second toe may or may not be longer than your big toe, but if your little pinky toe is larger than your big one...well, you have my sympathy.

So an anatomical toe in a sock pattern just makes good sense, when you think about it. Of course, it does mean that, like your shoes, your socks will now have to go on the "right" foot, which may cause some concerns in the wear and tear department; but that remains to be seen. For now, I'm very pleased with the anatomical toe concept. I prefer not to burst that bubble.

But what if you like to make your socks widdershins -- from the toe up? My chief beef with that method is that I'm not even a little bit crazy about the little lumps that form along the outside edge of yer basic short-row toe. It's those double wraps that do it, I think; and while I've tried and tried, I just haven't been able to get rid of the bumpy bits.

When I complained bitterly about this, some of my knitter friends suggested that I try this great new method called Judy's Magic Cast-on.

I admit that I was a bit (okay, a lot) stubborn about trying it -- mostly because it involves circs, and I am a confirmed DPNer. Turns out that I shouldn't have written Judy Becker's method off so quickly, because it's actually the perfect antidote to the whole lumpy-bumpy problem. And I didn't need to make my entire sock on a circ, either (heaven forfend!). All I did was perform the necessary initial magic on a circ, work up to about 14 stitches per needle, and then transfer the whole thing to four DPNs.

Happy sigh: I had a perfectly neat (though not asymmetrical) toe, and could proceed apace.

Incidentally, I found Cat Bordhi's YouTube video to be the best explanation of how to perform the magic cast-on -- at least, it made the most sense to me. Something about all those screeching pterodactyls and ticking clocks, I think. Plus the fact that her demo moves at the speed of growing grass. At my age, I appreciate a more laid-back approach.

So there you have it: two ways to keep your feet happy without driving yourself to distraction. Go forth and make beautiful music for your toes! Class dismissed.

In which my point is illustrated

The scene: a small independent coffee shop across the street from our office.

The place was almost deserted this morning when I arrived to pick up my morning coffee. I had a few minutes to spare, so I sat down, took out my spindle, and started working up some of the Fleece Artist BFL I told you about on Friday.

The young woman behind the counter was much intrigued, and couldn't resist asking what I was doing. I was just telling her about how spindles are one of the oldest known tools, thought to predate the wheel, and about how multiple versions have popped up in cultures around the world, when an older gentleman came in, blowing on fingers to warm them.

He and the server kibbitzed for a few minutes while she made him a tiny cup of espresso. He tossed it back as if it were a shot of brandy, and then turned to me with a huge grin of recognition.

"My mother -- she used to do that!" He pointed at my spindle. "She would do it like this -- " (here he mimicked rolling his hand down his thigh) "-- and then, zip, zip, zip -- she'd roll it up. Not so many people do this now, especially in Canada!"

Turns out the gentleman was originally from the Calabria region in Italy. He told me his mother had tried to teach him to spin on a drop spindle, but he never got the knack; instead, he'd gone on to become a barber. But he was thrilled to see me carrying on the old ways. We had a good chat on the merits of rolling versus flicking the spindle, and on the exact kind of yarn one could make in this way.

After he'd left the shop, the server leaned across the counter, her eyes wide. "Wow -- you really weren't kidding about spindles being everywhere, were you?"

Nope.

Gold

For some reason, the fairytale Rumpelstiltskin has been resonating with me of late. I think it's the part about "spinning straw into gold"--the more I contemplate that, the more I sympathize with that poor girl, locked up in the tower. If I were her, I'd have been mightily pissed.

I mean really. Straw? Who spins straw? What kind of demented power-mad freak asks that of anyone? And asking for gold is just plain dumb. Not to mention greedy.

In any case, I have some gold to show you today:

It's Fleece Artist's Blue-faced Leicester, in the colourway Amber. Not sure why I've been finding this one such tough going. Usually BFL is my friend, and we get along just fine, but this time I really had to prep the snot out of it beforehand: I fluffed up every inch of the stuff, and still I ran into sticky bits that just didn't want to pull out and twist up nicely.

The result is not quite as bad as if I'd been attempting to spin straw, but it's nowhere near the nice even singles I've been getting lately from Merino, Merino/silk, Shetland, and Corriedale.

On the other hand, it's definitely gold.

(Blurry, out-of-focus gold, but still.)

In which nagging yields dividends

I have always longed for wooden sock blockers, the good old-fashioned ones I see in many LYSs. I know, you can make them yourself out of wire coat hangers or cereal boxes, but I wanted wooden ones. Nice wooden ones with holes for airflow, and they'd have to be big enough to fit my socks. It doesn't seem that much to ask.

But when I've enquired after the ones I've seen at yarn shops, the LYS people have always told me, "No, those aren't for sale. No, we don't know where you can get them." And then they smile apologetically and I say something like, "No hard feelings," and we go on our way.

This tableau has played out in a number of stores, to the point where I'd pretty much given up on the concept, until we attended the Wood Show last November, and I saw Rachel putting a band saw through its paces.

That's when I started nagging gently requesting that she perhaps could devote five or 10 minutes of her valuable time to making her poor old mother a pair of flat wooden forms in the shape of feet, so I could block the socks that I slave and sweat over, for her benefit I might add. Not that I begrudge her, but still. It's the least she could do, don't you think?

For some reason, none of my arguments seemed to make a dent. Rachel remained resolutely deaf to my pleas, and I went sock blocker-less.

About a month ago, Rachel's boyfriend Kalen, who is no slouch in the woodworking department himself, either took pity or got sick of listening to me whining.

In any case, one day he shyly presented me with a bag containing the coveted sock blockers. He'd taken one of my socks, traced around it, then cut the blockers out of the pressed wood they seem to use these days in shop classes. Then he cut out holes, Swiss cheese-like, to let air flow through.

He made me two pairs, probably because he realized that if I only got one set I'd be back on his doorstep trying to wheedle another out of him, so he might as well do it now and get me off his back for a while. Smart lad.

Last night I put them to good use: a pair of socks I'd knit last spring had gone all wonky in the wash. This was not their first, nor their second wash either -- I don't know what got into them, but apparently they took exception to something, and when I took them out of their mesh bag they had gone all felty and weird. (They're Summer Swings, made from Fleece Artist's Somoko, and until last night they'd been perfectly well behaved.)

So I looked at them and they at me, and then I remembered: I now own the Ultimate Weapon, designed to put the fear of God into socks that get Ideas. So I took the misshapen, shrunken, felted blobs and stretched them over my sock blockers, ignoring their howls of protest.

It worked.

This morning they came off the blockers just as docile as you please, and even though they look a bit muzzy from all that felting, they fit like a dream, and are just as comfy as before.

I declare myself pleased.