Back Story

Today is a rare delight for me:  I get to tell you about something I made, which you can actually now see.  Some of you might even already have it, since the Blue Moon Fiber Arts Rockin' Sock Club  first shipment has officially gone out.  I am privileged to have been chosen to make this design for the coolest, toughest, and most devoted group of sock knitters that ever was.  No pressure.  

Sometimes I feel like the character in Greek mythology (I think it might have been Midas' barber) who couldn't keep a secret and had to dig a hole and whisper it into the ground to keep from exploding.  There are so many things I dream up, and work on, and tangle with, that I am forbidden to share with you before they are ready for prime time.  And as those who have met me know, I was born without the Shut Up Gene, so things get dicey for me at these times.  When I am knitting on a deadline, and every minute has to be spent on one of these Project X items, I can't even go to knit nite, because I can't be trusted not to spill the secrets.  Bummer.  So with great glee, I herewith spew the goods on the Distelfink Socks:

I was really surprised to learn that the lovely and talented Lucy Neatby was selected for this project as long ago as Sock Summit, because I was asked only this fall.  Maybe the enormously busy and productive Ms. Newton forgot that she wanted a second design in the space between?  Or maybe she was mulling over whether traditional stranded colorwork was really the way to go?  I would never ask, since I hate to look a knitting job in the mouth.  What I do know is that this project represents the very first stranded colorwork sock that Blue Moon has ever offered, and I am well and truly flattered by the honor I was given to make it.

The idea for this sock originally presented itself to me a couple of seasons back, when Abby Franquemont and I first met.  I was trying to think of a collaborative project that was all about friendship, and could somehow incorporate her killer spinning with my saucy knitting.  At the time, I thought it should be mittens, with each friend knitting a mismatched pair, and then exchanging to make sets.  She was going to spin some yarn, and I was going to design a motif.  Abby and I both got distracted, and well, you know how it is.  Even the best of friends can find themselves sidetracked, and promise to pick up where they left off some other time...Abby, I still want to trade mittens with you, and someday we will do it!

So Tina asked me to meditate on the nature of friendship, to let it inspire a sock design.  She asked me my favorite color, and I answered "Aubergine", without any clue that she had already made a new aubergine colorway and given it to Lucy to work with a full 2 years ago.  Weird, no? 

I fell in love with Distelfinks when I was a kid, studying american quilts.  A mythical bird with magical powers?  And two of them together signify a blessed friendship?  Sign me up!  For a while I tried not to put that picot edge on the tops, and then I realized that resistance was futile.  The picot is my first love, my all-time favorite edge, and I just couldn't fight it.  Besides, I reasoned that the people getting this pattern were not necessarily going to be familiar with my sweater designs, so why not introduce myself to them properly?

Working with two brand-new, still nameless Blue Moon colors was completely transcendental.  The yarn came in the mail, without a ball band, note, explanation, or anything.  It just arrived, and immediately started whispering to me what it wanted to be.  And after forming an intimate friendship with it, I couldn't help but give the colors names:  The multi-colored one reminded me of a tropical cocktail in a coconut cup.  I dubbed it "Fuzzy Sunrise on the Beach".  And the dark semi-solid could only be "Auber-Genius", like what Wile E. Coyote has printed on the business card he hands to Bugs Bunny.  Last week, when I visited Tina, she presented me with my very own January kit (Rockin' Sock Club: I'm not just a designer, I'm also a member!) I saw then that she had actually adopted one of my names.  And for the record, I think "Pinky Swear" is a way better moniker for the multi than the one I came up with. 

So that's the story of the Distelfink socks.  Oh, and the part when Tina Newton said my sock toes were sexy?  I totally geeked out.  After I read that in her dyer's notes, I vowed never to wash my eyes again.


 

Love Song

Love is in the air.  Valentine's Day is only a heartbeat away.  Which is about the time I'll be able to tell you what this project is.  But not now, sadly.  For the time being, it's just the yarn and me, sharing some very special and romantic moments.  Even though our love is secret, I just can't resist shouting it from the rooftops:  I LOVE LOVE LOVE this yarn:

I can tell you that it's plump, luscious and juicy.  It's got 32, count em, 32 plies of lustrous wooly goodness.  I'm using US 10.5 needles, which for me might as well be telephone poles.  My fingers called to let me know they appreciate the change from the skinny little frog fuzz yarn I've been knitting with lately.  

No lightweights here.  This yarn's got back.  Got some junk in its trunk.  Just more of it to love, baby.  Being well-upholstered is nothing to be ashamed of, when you wear it like this skein.  Dead Sexy yarn.

If loving it is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Oh, and if you guess what this yarn is, I still can't tell you until the pattern is published next month, but you will have my undying respect.

The First Step Is Admitting You are Powerless Over Math

I am a creature of absolutes.  Black or white.  Win or lose.  Pick a side: We're at war.  I rarely dwell in the space between - it makes me twitchy.  Er.    So you would think that the very nature of Mathematics would appeal to me.  It's incontrovertible.  The numbers either add up, or they don't, and it's possible (or so I'm led to understand) to dissect a math problem to the very juncture at which its legs fell off.  You can know, with precision, exactly the point at which you went astray.  Or so I'm told.

Couldn't prove it by me. 

Every once in a while, I begin a project with MUCH more confidence than my math skills should warrant.  Not often, but from time to time, I hear myself thinking things like "...and I'll figure out the math part later...".  These are the sorts of thoughts which cause Tech Editors to come to your house in the night.  And I don't mean to have tea, either.

In spite of my fervent desire to begin 2011 on a note of success, I have instead spent the last 5 days knitting and reknitting the same stoopid stinking sweater back.  I blame myself, of course.  It's only because I elected to think.

Usually I work by figuring out one thing at a time.  What is the gauge?  Knit a swatch.  How many stitches and rows are in an inch?  How many inches of knitting do I think would look nice around the body?  Whose body is it?  And so on, until sometime near the end of the project when minutiae start to occur to me, such as Will there be enough yarn?

Well this time, in what can only be described as a fit of overconfidence, I decided to use this "simple" pattern as a test case for working out the entire pattern ahead of time, and then knitting it.  I would painstakingly sketch, schematic, count and cogitate, until all the numbers for all the sizes were completely worked out, and then knitting the sample would be just like using somebody else's pattern!  What fun!

Until the part where the knitting I was doing turned out to have been based on basic arithmetic done by ME.  So preoccupied was I, after failing to produce the anticipated number of stitches for the third time, that I failed to notice that the sweater back could not be worn by any human.  Not one with appendages in the places where I keep mine, anyhow.

But I'm not letting it get me down.  No, Siree.  I'm just telling myself that I've cleverly gotten my Epic Math Bloodbath out of the way early this year.  That's right.  No more second-guessing my own hard-earned processes.  Not for me.  I'm the big loud-y always telling everybody that a knitter's OWN way is the best one for them, and nobody should try to squeeze themselves into someone else's knitting mold, after all.  From now on I'm gonna listen to my own loud advice. 

Unless the advice is to try using math for something that sheer force of will can achieve.