What would we do...

.... without self-striping sock yarn? To wit - my sample and one of my favourite yarns- Sandnes Garn's Sisu Fantasy. Fingering weight, but not so fine that I had to go so far down in needle size that it would have been more like knitting with wire, and with delightful stripes. This is a Norwegian company and it can sometimes be hard to find this yarn, but so far, so good.

The socks are done from my standard method (which when you think about it is no different from anyone else's) with mock cable heel flaps. Since I wear my hand knit socks with sandals or clogs I like to make use of the heel flap for something decorative if I can.

I've been reading Cat Bordhi's wonderful new book about new sock architectures, and as soon as I'm finished the sock currently on the needles (which is a test knit I'm very excited about), I'm going to try a set of Bartholomew's socks.

March is almost over

March is almost over. It's snowing to beat the band outside - it would, don't you think, just when it's time for spring to be here. I think there ought to be a law against snow during daylight savings time. I know I shouldn't complain - when you think about it, here on the Canadian prairies we've had a relatively mild winter. Oh, it was cold, but we didn't have much snow and we didn't have a single snow day. The worst snow I had was during one visit to Ontario, when our Nine Lessons and Carols was snowed out.

See the photo. The photo is March's sock output - well, not quite. I didn't include the Solstice Slip socks from Blue Moon's Rockin Sock Club that I finally finished. Not quite sure why, except that they were red and I realized that I really had been going through a blue/green phase.

If you look, you'll see an off-white pair of socks almost hidden beneath the blue and green ones. The yarn is nothing special - Patons Kroy, which is the only sock yarn I can actually buy in this city (I could rant about that, but am rather sure that to do so would result in there being NO sock yarn available in this city.) and was a test knit for a sock for The Unique Sheep. (And for anyone who is curious, it wasn't that I had no sock yarn, but I did realize I had no sock yarn that would show off stitches. My stash is primarily hand-dyes, which are wonderful and European self-stripes that knit up fast and fine in a plain sock.) Hence the trip to Michaels, which I'm ashamed to say, is the only place I can buy sock yarn in Brandon.

Anyway, the test yarn is here, the sock has been cast on, my fingers are working on the pattern and this is great fun!!

Where did it go?

February, I mean. Must be a change of job, the coming change of seasons, watching the US election unfold - which, from the perspective of a bemused Canadian, is always interesting. As a veteran of leadership conventions in this country, I rather like the brokering that goes on and the seemingly endless voting of delegates at the convention to determine the winner. Knowing who will win the Republican nomination and wondering why the superdelegates in the Democratic convention is such a bad thing is making my mornings interesting.

As for my lazy purling - it's only socks right now - designing one or two, trying to work out how to make them fit not just my feet, but the feet of a whole lot of people. You see, I have short, wide feet. The only time I ever came close to running out of yarn was when I was in a cable mode, and as we know, cables are real yarn suckers. (Did I mention short toes? Yes, short toes as well, so I never worry about whether the socks I'm knitting for myself are long enough. I'm sure you can see the challenge - what are real people's feet like? Are more long and narrow than short and wide? High instep? Thick ankles?

A good start

I must admit I stole the title from Ravelry, from one of the groups that discusses non-conventional or non-English styles of knitting. The Lazy Purl, it would seem, is the way I purl - left hand holding the yarn, and the right needle goes over, grabs it and pulls it through. It's much less complicated than a conventional purl, either right or left handed, and all I need to remember is that it reverses the mount for the knit stitches on the way back. Since I've always knit this way, it's hardly a stretch, since as soon as I could read a pattern, my mother was teaching me how to manage the decreases and the "knit through back loop" instructions. I always thought everyone did it this way: now I know differently.

I love the name - the Lazy Purl. That's me to a T. If there's an easier way to do it, I'm game.

Pictures of socks and stuff coming as soon as the digital camera is out of storage. Well - maybe I'll add one from the stash.

This is a sock I made from Louet Gems Merino - lovely to work with, but the skeins are on the small side, and without realizing what I was doing (there's a surprise), cables are on the large side - of needing lots of yarn, that is. This was an original for me - I call it the Waterfall Cable, because the cables undulate more than cross. I seem to have developed this habit of making socks more difficult than they need to be, particularly when the yarns aren't patterned.