The sock is progressing nicely. I’m feeling a little strange blogging about progress on a sock when it is very basic and nothing fancy. It’s not even my first sock. It will be the first sock I make with a full calf and it will be part of the first pair of socks I finish. Part of my excitement also stems from the fact it’s my first alpaca sock. Ok, so the yarn is only 50% alpaca and it’s millspun and it isn’t from my alpacas – it’s still my first alpaca sock. It is also my first sock with proper sock yarn, not cheap Walmart cotton. I can feel the difference!

I’m really liking how this sock feels. The knit fabric is very different from my first sock which was knit with cotton and very stiff and inflexible. This sock is flexible and it almost feels like one sinks into it – I’d describe the fabric as cushy or squishy. The good yarn is also easier to knit with. That cotton I used was very tight and unforgiving. This good yarn is much more forgiving of tight loops and uneven tension.

I’m ready to turn the heel which will be the dark purple – at least I think I’m ready to turn the heel. I don’t have a good concept of necessary length prior to turning the heel. Once I fit the sock after turning the heel, I may find myself ripping the heel and shortening or lengthening the foot. It’s all part of the learning process, but now that I’ve figured out how to rip knitting without starting over, it’s much less painful learning.

There is no spinning our double-ended crochet progress to report. I’m excited about knitting a sock.

Yesterday, I posted a question about figuring out what size to make socks for gifts. Janice in GA was kind enough to post the following link in response:

http://www.knittinganyway.com/socks/socksizechart.htm

Thanks much, Janice for the link and Catherine for the chart. That is a very good resource and I plan to make use of it. This chart is very helpful in the cases where I know or have a good idea of shoe sizes or when I have a co-conspirator who can obtain the shoe size for me.

Still, there are cases when I’m a little uncertain about shoe size and I don’t know that I have any convenient spies to provide such information. I’m sure knit-bloggers have encountered and overcome this situation in the past and I’m interested to hear any additional stories and tricks.

I’m thinking of things like stealing a sock and measuring it, but what if the sock resides several states distant?

I’m thinking about sneaking into the closet with a tape measure, but what if I’m caught. How does on explain why one is going through the laundry basket with a tape measure. “Honestly, officer, I was only trying to figure out what size sock to knit.” Yeah, right.

I’m thinking of taking the recipient shoe-shopping, but everybody knows I’m really not into shoes (a good pair of work boots, maybe). Besides, I might have to end up paying for some …

As clever as the knit-blogging community is, I’m sure you’ve got additional good ideas and I look forward to hearing them.

Ok. I know a lot of you knit-bloggers out there have dealt with this question, so I know you’ll have ideas and answers for me.

Suppose I want to knit a pair of socks for somebody, but I don’t know the size and shape of this somebody’s feet. Suppose I want the socks to be a surprise or a gift. I can’t very well ask to measure somebody’s feet, can I? That rather tips the fact that I want to knit socks for them. How do I know what size to make the socks?

What with all the secret sock pals and sock swaps and secretly knit gift socks I’ve read about, I know some of my readers have faced this question.

How can I figure out what size sock my intended recipient needs?

Having discovered that knitting socks is actually fun – see yesterday’s post
– I now have a question about said knitting.

I have read variously about wear strands, nylon ravel strands, carried fuzzy nylon strands, etc. I’m not quite sure what the proper term is. The purpose of these strands is fairly obviously to extend the life of the sock by putting additional material in the places subject to the most wear. Having grown up working outside in Wisconsin winters, I’ve worn out many a wool sock. I can really see the value of increasing the durability of something as labor intensive as a hand-knit sock.

I have some questions about how this strand is added.

How is the strand added? Is it carried with the knitting and knit into the sock, or is it threaded through the stitches to prevent them from unraveling once the first stitch starts to wear? I can see potential value in both approaches.

I wear out socks in three places, with the ball of the foot typically being the first place to wear through. The other places my feet chew up socks are the top of the big toe and the outside bottom of the heel. The big toe isn’t just a toenail thing – I have had calluses on the top of my big toes as long as I can remember.

Most of the tutorials I have read mention carrying a nylon or fuzzy nylon strand through the heel or toe and heel to provide additional material with good wear capabilities in those areas. I can see how it would be easy to carry an additional strand of material – two strands held together for knitting purposes – through these short-row areas. As you can see from my sock pictures, I’m already making a sock with the toe and heel a different color. It seems very simple to carry an additional strand in these areas. Is this how it is done?

Unfortunately, the most vulnerable section of my socks is the ball of the foot which is knit in the round. An additional thread in this area would have to be carried all the way around the foot – which lead me to the idea of threading the extra strand through the loops to prevent the sock from unraveling. The additional thread could easily be “sewn” through the bottom stitches in a back and forth pattern. Is this the preferred technique?

What sort of nylon thread is used? Is this something I’ll find at a knitting shop, or should I go to a sewing store and find a good nylon sewing thread?

My final question is about feeling the nylon threads. Many of the socks I am making will be alpaca or alpaca blends. I don’t really want to feel the nylon strands in the sock. Is this an issue?

Any and all thoughts are welcome.

I have been knitting. There is no regular crochet on the hooks. The double-ended crochet and spinning are forgotten. My handspun alpaca yarn is languishing. I am knitting a sock and if things continue to go this well, I will knit a second one!

This is my second sock to get this far. When it gets finished, it will be my first complete sock. Knitting the toe was still a struggle although much easier this second time around. Even better, the toe fits and isn’t lumpy. Stockinette in the round has suddenly become easy and it’s starting to get faster. The sock feels good. It fits. The stitches feel good. The fabric feels good. I’m enjoying knitting.

I said the toe was a struggle. “The toe gave me fits” might be a better statement. I found myself purling the knit rows on several occasions – and catching the error two rows later. I managed to rip the erroneous stitches without having to frog the whole sock – I think I may have figured out how to pick up stitches when ripping. In the past, if I’ve had to rip more than about five stitches, I have generally ended up frogging the entire item and starting over. Working to within five stitches of perfection is extremely limiting with respect to the size of finished objects one can produce.

I’m starting to wish that knitting books and tutorials spent more time on dealing with mistakes. The simple statement, “rip it back and repair it” is not nearly so simple as it seems, but most of what I’ve seen goes no deeper. (The wonderful and very in depth Yarn Harlot repair method described here and here is still beyond my skill fear level.) I’ve been needing to know how to rip my work back without making the situation worse. Figuring out how to fix my errors is very empowering. I have a long way to go before my knitting skills catch up with my crochet skills, but I think I’ve just overcome the biggest impediment.

If you are reading this in hopes of learning how to rip back and repair you work without destroying the entire object, my big epiphany was to grab a spare needle and stick it in the loop before pulling the stitch out of the loop. Said differently, the stitch you are about to rip is holding the stitch (loop) beneath it and preventing that loop from vanishing as well. If you stick a spare needle – doesn’t have to be the proper size, just has to be something – in the loop you don’t want to ravel before you pull the loop you do want to ravel, then the stitch is protected and you can recover. If you just yank on that string, all is lost! In this sense, I have found knitting to be very different from crochet. In knitting, ripping by pulling the string exposes a great many stitches. Each and every one of these stitches must be picked up to resume progress on the item. If any one of them rips further, additional ripping or mending is necessary and all hope of progress is likely lost. In crochet, however, there is never more than one vulnerable loop and one can resume work by picking up this single loop.

Having figured out how to repair my mistakes, I am now making rapid progress on my sock.

Our garden is doing well. We’ve managed to keep the plants watered and thus far there have been no “tipover” or other casualties.

Mint continues to expand despite having been harvested several times for tea.

The tomato continues to grow. I hope the container is large enough.

The petunia is growing well and showing us lots of color.

And our much-abused house plant is showing good recovery from the move.

We went to Yarn Expressions yesterday for their big sale. It was crowded when we arrived – and even more crowded five minutes later. I think crowds in yarn stores are great fun. Pam headed for the nearest table, sat down, and tried to stay out of the way. (Roles are reversed in rubber stamp and scrapbook stores.)

The hand painted silk I had my eye on was gone – one of the risks of waiting for a big sale. The Rowan I had my eye on just didn’t grab me the way it had on my earlier visit. I had to investigate every yarn in the store all over again!

I ended up with three skeins of Berroco Ultra Alpaca. One skein is color 6297, called Lobster Mix. The other two are 6278, Stone Washed Mix. Despite it’s name, Ultra Alpaca is 50% wool and only 50% alpaca. I can feel the wool in the blend, but I think it will make great, warm, socks.

Rowan Ultra Alpaca

Lobster is really a lovely mix of color

Even though I already have one double-ended crochet scarf on the hook, I wanted to try another. I pulled a skein of handspun Georgia out of my bag and went in search of a complimentary yarn to do it justice. I settled on Rowan Tapestry. It’s not as soft as Georgia’s handspun from her 2002 fleece, but it is soft enough to do the scarf justice. The yarn is 70% wool and 30% soybean. I can feel the wool, but it’s a nice, soft, wool. I think color 172, called Pot Pourri will do justice to my Georgia yarn. I also got two balls of color 170, called Country, which will work with Georgia, but may end up used with combination with some of my other handspun. I look forward to integrating the variegation with Georgia’s rich, warm, dark brown.

Handspun alpaca (Georgia’s 2002 fleece) next to Rowan Tapestry.

When I got home, I started knitting. What elseis one supposed to do with brand new yarn!?

Lobster Mix Ultraalpaca on the needles. This really is the toe of the sock. I’m planning on using blue for the bodies and this color called Lobster Mix for teh toes and heels.

I enjoyed the shopping and enjoyed the store. Thoroughly enjoyed actually having a weekend off when another store was having a big sale! I’ve got yarn. It’s wool yarn. It’s in colors I don’t have in my alpaca stash. I’m excited – and I’ve got three works in progress.

I’ve started a new spinning project. It’s a roving I made several years ago for sale at Black Sheep Gathering. The remaining inventory has been hauled to and from shows, bounded around the house, and most recently, moved across the country. It’s a little shopworn, so I’ve decided to spin it myself.

The roving is 60% suri alpaca and 40% huacaya alpaca. The suri is very long, fawn, and not very soft. In fact, it has been rejected for machine processing due to length, and when I first spun it, I almost threw it away because the resulting yarn felt like baler twine. I’ve since learned how to handle this fiber and I’m really enjoying it – and making a yarn that feels much softer than the raw fiber. There are two tricks to this suri – first is to make sure I’m not folding or kinking it in the processing. It doesn’t have to be spun worsted, any fibers that get folded make very prickly points – so don’t fold the fibers. The second trick I’ve discovered with this fiber is that I can blend this not soft suri with not very soft huacaya and end up with a roving that’s softer than either fiber.

The huacaya fiber in this roving is variable length and not particularly soft black and brown huacaya – still good fiber, but not the softest I have. Because the suri is over two years growth, even the longest huacaya fibers in the blend are much shorter than the suri fibers – which was a bit of a trick in the carding process. I achieved the blending by layering the fiber onto my carder and then re-carding the resulting batts.

The roving looks like this:

Color accuracy is good, but not great. The roving is actually a little richer in color than the picture shows. Note the long fawn and cream suri fibers and the patches of darker huacaya fibers.

I’m spinning the fiber semi-worsted using a very long, narrow drafting triangle. The shorter huacaya fibers do get drafted, but not to the extent the suri does and the huacaya does float through the drafting triangle to some extent. As a result, the suri is spun under greater tension than the huacaya and the huacaya tends to float into the drafting triangle where it gets wrapped by the longer suri fibers. The floating effect is incomplete. I’m still drafting the huacaya to maintain uniform yarn diameter and some of the huacaya does get stretched out in the drafting triangle. The result is that some of the huacaya is spun and some is wrapped by suri fiber to form sort of a core of the yarn and some does a little of each. It’s an interesting and pretty yarn.

Here it is on the wheel:

And here it is up close:

Again, the colors are a little richer than shown in the pictures.

So far, the yarn seems to be holding the softness of the roving – that is softer than any of the parent fibers in the blend. Final analysis of softness must come after plying, because the single is a little overspun and hard at this point. I’m having fun with the spinning and I think I’m making some nice yarn.

Oh, and in garden news, we’ve got tomatoes.

I’ve seen some very nice scarves made from alpaca using a double-ended crochet hook. In fact, some of my handspun has ended up in such scarves. I’ve wanted to try the technique for a number of years, but I’ve never gotten around to doing so – until yesterday.

Part of the problem was the lack of double-ended crochet hook. I found a size I circular crochet hook on clearance last week and purchased it at a good price.

Next came the search for yarn. I wanted to practice with some cheap, Walmart, acrylic, but none of my junk acrylic made the move from Oregon. I visited a yarn store, but I just didn’t find a yarn that begged for the project. Two options remained. First, was to knit from my stash. Second was to spin up some yarn especially for the project. I started sorting through the stash looking for an excuse to spin …

And I found some yarn that would work.

Double-ended crochet technique generally uses two strands of yarn. (One can crochet a circle or spiral with an ordinary hook unlike in knitting where a circular needle or multiple dpns are required.) I decided to work with one strand from my jumbo cone of unknown very light weight millspun alpaca and one ball of single ply handspun alpaca. Unfortunately, the pictures don’t do the colors justice because I had my choice of indoor lighting or flash when the pictures were taken.

Here is the scarf so far

I’m finding the technique a little challenging and I really hope the live end of the scarf has the same number of stitches on it as the starting end does. The hook is greatly oversized for the yarn and I’m having problems with tension. The yarn – especially the very fine millspun thread – tends to draw up into little tiny knots instead of staying in big loops. When these little tiny knots are created, I find it very difficult to get the vastly oversized hook into the loop for the next stitch. Use of the oversize hook is intentional as I am trying to create a very open fabric. The trick is not to overtension the yarn and draw the loops tighter after they’re off the hook. (The size C hook I used on the previous hat and scarf is oversized for the millspun – the double-ended hook is size I yet the yarn is the same.)

I’m also having some difficulty figuring out where the edges of the fabric are. This means I’m tending to add stitches – except when I drop them.

Even so, I’m liking what I am making and enjoying the new technique.

I finished plying the Calico Creme roving a few days ago and skeined it up. Only today, did I realize I didn’t have a picture on the blog. That’s one day I could have had spinning content and didn’t.

Anyhow, here is the skein.

302 yards, 4.4 ounces of two-ply 100% alpaca, 100% handspun in a colorway called Calico Creme. The base fiber is from Drake which means it came from our herd.

A couple months ago, I finished a crocheted hat using the very fine yarn that was my traveling yarn as I moved from Oregon.

Since that time, I have been working on this scarf which is now complete.

The hat and scarf are crocheted from millspun alpaca using a size C (US) hook. The hat pattern has been discussed elsewhere but not pictured until today. The matching scarf is worked with four rows of double crochet followed by a row of dc-ch1-sk1. The next row consisted of four double-crochets worked every other ch1-space followed by rows of 2dc in each of the two center stitches of the fan. To reverse the process, I used a row of 2 edc decreases across the four fan stitches followed by a two-stitch chain to create an inverted fan. I then followed this with several rows of two edc decreases followed by two chain stitches to create more rows of inverted fans. I then worked my way back to a dc-ch1-sk1 pattern and eventually back to rows of double crochet for the border.

(If you have questions about the scarf pattern, please post a comment and I’ll try to be more specific about the pattern.)

It’s not perfectly symmetrical, but I like it. The pattern works well with the very fine yarn. It’s open enough not to be overwhelmingly hot, but closed enough to be quite warm.

I like the scarf. I’ll try the pattern – or a variant – again. The hat will work for some head sizes, but won’t work for everyone. I need to develop a one-size-fits-most hat pattern with a nice stretch brim that works with a variety of yarn sizes. For the most part, I like my current pattern, but the brims tend not to be stretchy so the hats fit only some head sizes.

My next project is to figure out what yarn to use with my new double-ended crochet hook. I’m planning to make a fairly wide, fairly open scarf – almost a wrap. I think I have the stitch pattern figured out in my head. I know I want to use two different colors of yarn. I don’t know which yarn I want to use and it is quite likely I’ll end up spinning something for the project.

I probably ought to save this one for eye candy Friday.

This picture was taken this morning at Big Spring Park in downtown Huntsville. It came out perfect. I’ve resized it for web use, but I’ve done absolutely no other manipulation to it. Sometimes things just come out right.

Yup. No new spinning content, so another garden post.

The mint has gotten larger – and been pinched for tea – and gotten larger again.

The tomato has grown a cage – and gotten bigger.

And the garden has grown a petunia hanging basket.

Ok. I admit it. I have to admit it. I’m a yarn snob. Having raised alpacas – and still owning a couple – I am also an alpaca snob. I think this makes me an ALPACA YARN SNOB of the very worst snobbiest sort.

I visited Yarn Expressions, my local yarn store, for the first time yesterday. There wasn’t much fiber in the store – after all it’s a yarn store – and I was disappointed in the fiber. Oh, the colors were striking and the colorways were probably great. They just begged me to reach out and touch the yarn – which was disappointingly wool – not just any wool, but a not very soft at all wool. Scratchy. I know, I know, coarse wool has it’s purposes. It’s good fiber. It just doesn’t feel like alpaca, etc., etc., etc.

Yuck!

Don’t get me wrong. Yarn Expressions is a nice yarn store – and as large as I’ve ever seen. I’m not yucking the yarn store – I just, well, didn’t like the feel of that spinning fiber.

Ok, so they don’t have much fiber, but they have a lot of yarn – yarn in exciting colors all over the store.

I moved on to the yarn. Yarn Expressions has as large a selection of knitting yarns as I have ever seen. They have lots of brands, colors, weights, fibers, everything. They have most of the yarns lauded highly by the popular blogs. They have yarns I have read about for three years, but never seen. Unlike hobby and craft stores, they have yarns containing actual natural fibers and not very many yarns containing 100% synthetic fibers. I worked my way through the yarns feeling the yarns.

And I was mostly disappointed.

While some of the merino yarns were VERY nice merino yarns, most of the yarns felt, woolly in the bad, scratchy, sense of the word. All these fancy, blog-lauded yarns I’ve been waiting to feel. All these wonderful wools I’ve been wanting to try.

With a few exceptions, they all felt disappointingly woolly.

I am truly a yarn snob.

Please, nobody take this post as a bashing of Yarn Expressions. They are a good store with nice, helpful, people. If anything, this post is a bashing of self. Clearly, it’s not the store’s fault that I am an alpaca snob! I plan to return to Yarn Expressions and I plan to spend money in the store.

And please, I’m not really against wool. I still wear and enjoy wool. I can probably wear most of the wools at Yarn Expressions against my skin. Wool is warm. Wool is fire retardant. Wool is a natural fiber. I really wish I could say I’ve got nothing against wool – but this is clearly not true. Honestly, the only thing I have against wool is that it isn’t alpaca!

I didn’t buy yarn. I feel bad not buying yarn and not supporting my LYS. I drooled over some silk and almost paired some handpainted silk with millspun alpaca in a double-ended crochet experiment. I really want to try a technique I have seen that involves crocheting with two colors and a double-ended hook. I really like the effects I’ve seen using one strand of variegated yarn and one of a solid color. The handpainted silk and brown alpaca I found would have worked well.

But I didn’t buy it.

I fondled some Rowan wool – nice, soft, wool but I can’t tell you which Rowan – in a tweedy oatmeal and a warm tweedy brown. The colors would have worked well in the technique I want to try. The colors were very nice. The wool felt good – not alpaca, but good. The yarn was the right weight. It was less expensive than the handpainted silk. I really like the yarn. I think I could have made a nice project with it.

But I didn’t buy it.

Pam asked me why I was willing to test a pattern and technique with handpainted silk, but not with handspun alpaca. If this seems odd, remember I work retail, but have a very large stash of alpaca fiber.

I didn’t have an answer for Pam’s question. When I think about it, part of the answer is that I haven’t put handspinning effort into the purchased yarn. Part of the answer is that much of my alpaca stash comes from animals we don’t own anymore – some of it from animals I never expect to see again. Handspun alpaca from my babies is special yarn. Handpainted silk is just money. And that’s only part of the answer. It’s not the whole answer. That’s part of my thinking, but that’s not the whole of my thinking. I still don’t have a really good answer for Pam.

Anyhow, my long anticipated visit to my LYS was a bust. Please, though, don’t blame it on the store or the wool. Blame it on Kim, the alpaca snob.

… I asked at work today, and I was told that a baby mule was a donkey. I don’t think so. I think the donkey is usually the father.

There is a pasture next to the apartment complex – actually between where I live and where I work. About ten days ago, I started noticing that the horses in the pasture were having babies.

Now, I know a baby horse is a foal – and it’s also either a filly or a colt depending on gender. Some of the babies in the pasture might be foals, but I’m not sure about some of the others.

I think this little guy is a newborn. He’s really unsteady on his legs and I don’t remember seeing him yesterday.

And just like cria, these little ones are finding the grass is a long way down.