I already have one of them – and a little niece, too. Both of those have been treated to my knitting and crochet obsession at times, but this is the first time a baby has been born in my immediate family since I started to knit. The others were already about six months old when I started. My sister is going to get a package with a baby blanket and about five hundred pairs of baby booties at this rate.
The first one I made was super cute but far too small for humans of any age, unless I could figure out how to get them in-vitro. I don’t know how I manage to make booties so small – I follow the patterns and yarns and needles and yet they come out miniscule.
So now I’m using my own guess-this-sort-of-looks-right numbers for the pattern I found and it’s working out great when I can remember how much I cast on for the next bootie.
I should really take notes.
The best thing about sock knitting (apart from everything about sock knitting ever) is that there’s usually a little yarn left over, unless you’re one of those people who casts on two-at-a-time toe-up so you can use every single scrap of yarn. (I am not that people.) I like using the leftovers for my weird, slowly emerging blanket I’m making at work but this time the scraps are being used for baby booties and that’s just as fun.
I won’t get to meet my little nephew for quite some time seeing as he’s being born on a different continent. The best I can do is make sure he has warm feet when he makes his first appearance. That’s what knitter aunties are for, isn’t it?
There’s not much I like more than crispy, hard-wearing sock yarn. There’s something about the texture that makes me so happy even if it’s not the softest thing ever and in the space of two days the combination of colour and texture spurred me into this sock.
I am halfway down the calf of the other sock and realised I know my leg and skinny ankles so well that I can throw out a sock without thinking too hard. This is how I knit this sock (which is high enough to wear with my Doc Martens):
Ingredients
400ish yards pretty sock yarn
2.75mm needles (preferably wood)
Scissors
Darning needle
A foot on which to put the sock
Cast on a multiple of 4 – for me I usually do 60, but as this sock is longer I’m doing 64.
Do two-ish inches your ribbing of choice. I like 2×2 but 1×1 is fine and even 3×1 if you’re feeling adventurous.
Switch to stockinette. Forget you’re doing stockinette halfway through the row and go back to ribbing. Curse enthusiastically. Tink and return to stockinette.
Knit about two inches plain stockinette, then decrease at the beginning of the row every three rows until you’re down to 60.
Admire the shapely calf curve.
Knit until you’re about as long as you want it, then remember how skinny your ankles are and decrease another two for luck.
Do a heel flap in eye of partridge until it looks roughly square, then pick up the side stitches and curse because despite years of experience you still forgot to turn the heel.
Pick up the stitches on the sides of the heel flap, realise it’s uneven in numbers, shrug and decrease an extra stitch.
Decrease the gusset stitches every two rows until you’re back to 60.
Knit until it reaches the bottom of your long monkey toes. Do another couple of rows for good luck.
Decrease the toe stitches – first every other row (3 times), then every row until there’s either ten or eight stitches left.
Kitchener the last stitches with sweat on your brow.
Weave in the ends. Triumph!
Then you have to repeat all of that again, hoping against hope that the sock ends up roughly the same length as the other one. Somehow I never succeed in this, not even when the pattern repeats say there should be exactly the same stitches in each leg. I’m pretty sure it’s magic. Dark, bad magic.
At my LYS last Thursday I browsed the shelves looking for inspiration and I came across a couple of interesting skeins of yarn. I gawped, I bounced, and I purchased them immediately. She’s moving buildings in a few weeks so there was the added fun of getting it at a discount.
To no one’s shock it’s sock yarn. Did I just… forget that I live for socks? That socks are the happiest of all knitting? That there’s nothing like churning out a vanilla sock in a few days?
It’s Opal Sockenwolle Handgefärbt which is a lot of fun to say – though my senior school German is probably lacking on the pronunciation front. The Australien skein (top) had a lovely chunk of purple snuggled in the middle and I couldn’t resist it. The Afrika one is more muted and less busy. Both have that satisfying soft scratchiness that all the best sock yarns should have.
Since Martina was busy I wound both up before I’d even paid for them and cast on with the Australien one.
One of the best things about sock yarn is how the colours look so different in the skein than in the cake, and then different again in the sock. To my surprise the Australien colourway spirals when you knit with it. It’s clown barf for sure but it’s muted, fun clown-barf so I enjoy it thoroughly.
Yesterday was a day off so after heading to the farmer’s market and hanging with a good friend I settled down to watch some Green Wing and knit the sock while doing big belly laughs at their ridiculous antics. With 2.75mm needles I’m making quick progress. As of this morning I’m already finished with the heel flap and ready to turn it.
After the all-encompassing lethargy and apathy of the last week this is so much fun. Turns out my knitting funks don’t last very long at all.
Sometimes I am so intense about my projects that I can’t focus on anything else. Sometimes I’m only excited at a normal human level without risk of brain implosion, and those are the best times because I can still function.
But sometimes I look at my projects and all I can think is ‘meh’.
At the moment (as ever) I have roughly eleventy thousand projects on the needles. I have no idea of the precise number or what they are because I flit between them all the time. Some people like to focus on one project at a time and that’s great if it works for you! Yet beyond the occasional exception, it isn’t the way I work.
My little sister is giving birth in about ten weeks to another boy. I am most of the way through a blanket for him (meh) and about halfway through a cardigan for him (meh). These are the two projects I’m working on most often because babies tend to come to a schedule, give or take a week. I need to get these sent off as soon as possible.
Yet… I just… it’s so boring. I can’t take it any more. I want to knit socks. I want to knit all the socks.
To avoid this burn out I’ve put both the projects aside and I’m crocheting a bib for him out of some leftover yarn. It’s not at all functional but decorative is okay at this point, and it may end up having an elephant on it because why not?
When I started this blog it was with the idea of documenting my rise from bemused beginner to a better knitter. I had only started knitting shortly before my first post and had no idea back then how much the craft would become a part of my life.
It’s my fifth year of knitting now and I’m still learning something new every day. That’s not an accident either: I am passionate enough about knitting that I want to get better, and getting better involves more than just idle practice of the same things over again. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I got past the initial stage of knitting straight scarves and grimacing at the thought of anything more complicated and this post is the result.
So here’s ten ways I’ve found helped to be a better knitter. If you have any to add let me know!
1. Know that you suck.
The first time I picked up the needles and awkwardly cast on I was terrified. Not because I might strangle myself with the acrylic yarn or stab myself with the aluminium needles, but because I was trying something new and had no idea whether I would be good at it.
That’s the problem with a lot of people when embarking on acquiring new skills: we expect to be perfect immediately without the normal learning curve or we abandon it. Yet without these times we’ll never get to the part where we can wield our tools without injury and/or embarrassment.
So embrace the fact you suck and don’t let it stop you. No one is an expert at first try.
2. Don’t be afraid.
The thought of tackling another skill, even one as fun and rewarding as knitting, can be daunting. What if you spend all that time learning and still suck? What if you waste money on lovely yarn you never use? What if someone laughs at your modest creations?
These thoughts are normal but they shouldn’t be all you think about. Sure, knitting is hard for most people at first but there’s no need to be afraid of it.
3. Find a knitting group
I’m biased in that I learned to knit purely because my friend started up a knitting group in my hometown but I truly believe that sitting with a bunch of other knitters will help you.
Maybe it’s osmosis, but I find that sitting with my knitter friends for any length of time makes me feel like I can knit anything ever. Maybe it’s the inspiration of seeing what other people are making or maybe it’s just the assurance of knowing there are people you can turn to when you have questions. Whatever it is, my knitting groups are the driving force behind my knitting addiction.
Plus they’re really fun.
4. Be patient.
As I said, knitting is hard for almost everyone when they first pick up the needles. If it is easy for you right off the bat you are, sorry to say, a bit of a freak. It takes patience to get through that initial stage no matter how frustrating it can be.
The largest chunk of your patience will be when you make a mistake and have to fix or rip it back. This is where you will need to take a deep breath, put down the needles for a few minutes, and back away from the flamethrower. It’s okay. You will get through this.
5. Learn how to fix mistakes.
After a solid week of knitting (I’m barely exaggerating here), I had a very long, far too wide scarf on my needles. I looked at it with pride and then, after a moment, with despair. It was not a rectangle any more. It was a strange off-centred shape where I had been added and subtracting stitches at the end of rows.
The scarf in question.
To most people it wouldn’t have been obvious but for me it was the end of the project. I threw it down and picked up a crochet hook then didn’t knit again for a few months. This was my first project (which eventually ended up covered in flowers and tied to a lamppost) and trying to fix it scared me too much to bother.
When I went on YouTube and figured out how to keep track of stitches and pick up dropped ones I began to see that fixing errors wouldn’t mean the end of the world and knitting became much easier.
6. Get on Ravelry.
Most knitters who read this blog will already be regulars of Ravelry. If you’re not you need to be. Even if you don’t frequent the message boards (which can be extra fun), there are thousands of patterns available both as a resource and a way of gaining inspiration.
You can search by yarn weight and yardage to find the perfect project for the skein you have instead of falling back on old ideas. You can see the many ways this creative culture shows off its skills. And if you get stuck, you can pop on the boards and ask a question with a few dozen answers in no time at all.
It’s not an exaggeration to say I wouldn’t be the knitter I am today without Ravelry.
7. Count Your Stitches.
This seems like an obvious one but it wasn’t for me. The way I became more than a confused beginner was by consciously counting my stitches both on the live stitches to find my place and the rows to see my progress.
Though this is easy enough on stockinette and only a little trickier on garter stitch, it becomes more complicated when we get to cables and lace-work. Working out how to read your knitting by counting the rows and stitches gives you an advantage as you’ll be able to spot when you go wrong much quicker. Even better, you’ll be able to gauge how to fix it without setting fire to it and/or throwing it out of the top floor window.
8. Try new things.
We are creatures of habit, us humans. We like to settle in with what we know and stick to it.
But that isn’t going to get you anywhere with knitting. Have a look around and find interesting things to try; Pinterest is a great resource for that, as is Ravelry. Pick out a new lace stitch and swatch it just to see what happens. Put a cable or two in your stockinette. Try short rows without bursting into tears.
If it turns out you don’t enjoy that new stitch, oh well. You’ve learned something along the way which is never time wasted.
9. Ignore other people’s fear.
When you whip out the DPNs and fingering-weight yarn you will probably get someone saying how they’ve never tried socks, they’re too hard. Or if you pick up the slender circular and cast on laceweight they will grimace and say they can’t imagine doing something that fiddly.
Ignore them.
There is nothing inherently difficult about turning a heel and yet I was terrified of getting to it the first time I knitted a sock. Not because I thought I couldn’t figure it out but because so many people had already told me how difficult it was. They told me to use lifelines and not worry because no one turns a heel the first time successfully.
And then, perched on the edge of my seat with my teeth gritted, I did it. I turned a heel. No fireworks, no triumphant trombones, just an adorable rainbow sock whose twin I never made.
10. Stop reading and knit!
The biggest barrier to acquiring any new talent is time. If you can’t find the time then you won’t have the skill. Knitting is more labour-intensive than many people realise and it gets even worse (or better) once you’re hooked.
Knit whenever and wherever you can: on the train, at work (if you’re allowed), at home in front of the TV, out in the garden. Wherever you can pull out the WIP, do it. Every single stitch you complete is making you a better knitter.
As my friend once said, if you can’t find time to do something then you probably don’t want to do it all that badly anyway. If you want to be a better knitter, find the time to knit.
Yes, I prefer knitting with natural fibres. Of course I do: they’re more interesting in texture and generally make better quality items. Yet I still have quite a large stash of acrylic and don’t mind finding projects to use it up.
At the moment that project is a baby blanket for my sister’s unborn child. I am nervous about sending it to her due to the fact I have had many things go missing, but it’s something that I’m going to have to risk.
Knitting this blanket with acrylic was not an easy choice. I wanted to make one with wool but I knew it would be fiddly for my sister to wash it (she’s not a knitter) and though I could have got superwash, price was still a factor. There are other things that need my funds these days – little things like food and rent and keeping our many pets alive. So I picked acrylic.
It’s soft enough and cute too but I fear I don’t have enough of this pale blue colour to finish the blanket. To remedy that I’ve started knitting an intarsia heart into the middle of it and though I’m not sure if that will work either, it’s worth a try.
This blanket isn’t from a pattern. I’m knitting it how it wants to come out with little input from my rational mind, though I regularly get co-worker’s opinions. One co-worker likes it so much she wants me to write up the pattern so that’s promising.
The thought of seeing this wrapped around my future nephew like a hug I can’t give him is the best thing ever. Who cares if it’s acrylic?
There are people who need a generator to do random stripes.
I understand the impulse to make the randomness as attractive as possible and a generator is impartial, but that’s not how I do things. My randomness is less uniform.
When I want to be random in my knitting I just… go. I pick up my needles (or hook) and my yarn and I see where it takes me. I’m not saying this is a better way to do it – sometimes it turns out looking like the knitted equivalent of the brown sludge from mixing too many colours of paint together – but that’s how I get the most enjoyment out of my yarn.
In all honesty I struggle with following patterns. Not because I can’t do it but because I have the constant impulse to deviate and find out what would happen if I did this, or maybe that.
As a result my random stripes are rather less balanced. Take my linen stitch cowl; I started with a vague idea in mind that would make it quite regular in the stripes which would fade in and out of one another. However, the yarn didn’t agree with me and now I’m knitting whatever combination of rows happens each time I get to my marker.
It works for me. I know there’s a risk it’ll end up looking a little weird but the yarn and the stitch means it’s relatively unlikely. Either way I’ll be wearing it since the yarn is soft and drapes so well the colours are becoming almost secondary.
Can you do random stripes when you’re knitting or do you need some kind of guide for it? I’m interested to see what others do.
If I look back at the last few months I would say it’s been a time of epic sock production. Since November I’ve been knitting pair after pair and even better I’ve been wearing the results.
Last week I finished the rainbow socks which I am wearing as I write this.
Before that I knitted these socks, and started wearing some socks that mean a lot to me that have been languishing in a drawer for a while.
These socks I finished at least a month ago, maybe longer. I don’t know why I haven’t mentioned them here before. I finished them a while ago and I’ve been wearing them a lot since then. they’re comfortable and warm and long, all very good traits in socks.
I can’t remember what yarn this is. I don’t know when I started them. This is either a sign that I’ve hit my head recently (I haven’t this time), or a clue that I am knitting too many socks.
There was a time in my mythical teenage years where my entire wardrobe became rather lurid. I had spent most of my life worrying about what I wore and whether it made me look ‘weird’ or ‘different’, but leaving school and leaving my childhood home made me realise that I was both of those things. More importantly, it was suddenly a good thing.
Instead of being shunned for strange tastes and obsessive tendencies, I found like-minded friends. Some of those people remain in my life today and I thank them for shaping me into a (mostly) reasonable and self-confident person.
My fashion sense went from drab to one simple rule:
Wear as much colour as possible, all at once.
These latest socks fit the bill. Teenage me is jumping for joy, purple hair bouncing in the breeze.
The yarn that made these socks was a gift from a friend who actually predates my lurid rainbow phase. She is a wonderful and hilarious person with a huge heart, and has remained one of my best friends in all that time – at least ten years.
We have had a colourful friendship to match these socks; there have been times we have clashed so hard that we haven’t spoken for months at a time, but ultimately our differences work well together. When I left the UK in June 2014 she took me on a surprise trip to see Wicked, which shows you how awesome she is. And this yarn was a Christmas gift from her.
It came in two little 50g cakes, identical as hand-dyed yarn can be. I didn’t get a picture because I cast on right away. Hey, I was excited! The yarn came from indie dyer Truly Hooked, who may also be found on Etsy. It is lovely, just lovely.
Due to my reasonably small feet I was worried that I wouldn’t get to use all of the colours. That would simply not do. The gradients are reasonably long in these socks and I couldn’t bear the thought of not getting to the pink. I considered making them longer, but then Martina suggested knitting them in stripes – knitting from the outside of one cake and the inside of the other.
This was the result and I am thrilled.
Yes, they are bright. Yes, they are lurid. But honestly I have never grown out of that teenage all-the-rainbow phase and I doubt I ever will. My happiest days are when I get to wear my brightly coloured swooshy skirts. These socks will find a good and regular place in my wardrobe and my lovely friend knew that.
I still have just a little left which will be used to make some mini handwarmers for work.
My favourite thing about these socks is the conflicting heels and toes. It’s just adorable. and because of the slow gradients it didn’t leave an obvious change in the stripes once I’d turned the heel.
At one point I considered doing an afterthought heel but really… that’s never going to happen. It’s a sure way for me to never finish a project.
So that’s that. Some wonderful lurid rainbow handknit socks, all kitchenered and ready to go. They’re just as comfortable as they look too.
It’s just a shame it’s so wet and snowy out there or I would take some outside pictures to show off the colours even more.
Consider this post a big thank you to one of the best, most reliable and most interesting people I have known in my life. You know who you are.
Yesterday I had a day off work for an appointment with a new doctor. I was pretty stressed out afterwards so I put on an episode of American Horror Story and sat down to sort out my yarn, a task I’ve been meaning to do for a while.
We’ve finally resigned ourselves to staying in the current apartment for a while. Don’t get me wrong; we like it. It’s a nice space and it’s in a good location. They don’t mind that we have so many animals. All in all it’s great but the rent is high and it makes it difficult to save for our own place.
This resignation has lead us to cleaning up the spare room which until now has been mostly for storage. We’re going to get a desk in there and a recliner to make it a cosy space for relaxing and writing.
Part of clearing it up involved sorting my yarn and like before, I found projects I had forgotten.
This is my worsted-weight snuggly shawl I started… I don’t even know when. A while before leaving the UK so probably about a year ago. It is a simple knit from the Acadian Shawl pattern on Ravelry, very satisfying to do yet easy to remember and do without thinking about it constantly. A great TV-knit.
This photo was taken a long time before I left the UK. I know that because my shawl is about three rows from being finished. Yeah, that’s right – I abandoned it just before finishing it.
D’oh.
I’m going to figure out where in the diamond pattern I reached and then it should be finished and bound off within half an hour.
Forgetting projects like this is a fun way to distract myself from the fact I have lost all motivation for all of my current projects, but please tell me I’m not the only one who does this!
The yarn 
The Knitter Nerd 