Rhinebeck Recovery

I observed what I am now calling the Highest of High Holy Holidays in the knitter’s pantheon last week. Rhinebeck is something we knitters wait all year for, saving our pennies and making lists, and frantically knitting items to showoff to the crowd. It’s overwhelming and sheep-scented and the longest lines are tied for the Fold (where they sell STR) and the booth that sells the homemade pot pies.

I had the joy of hosting my dear friend J for the weekend when she flew down from Toronto to join me, and we took the train into the city and then up to Croton, where Melissa met us to drive the rest of the way up and we all proceeded to dive in headfirst. Here, have some pictures:

Mosaic

1. My train station, long before sunrise 2. Grand Central at dawn 3. Display at Brooks Farm 4. This sign speaks for itself, doesn’t it? 5. One of many seasonally appropriate displays 6. Lace display at A Touch of Twist (my absolute favorite) 7. The line for Franklin’s book signing at Carolina Homespun 8. Franklin & Me! 9. Pumpkin Carving 10. Melissa showing off some colorway serendipity. 11. Summoning People for the Ethical Treatment of Muppets! 12. Outside the Horticulture building 13. Ready for his close-up 14. A strange and mysterious creature 15. Shearing aftermath 16. Hanging out 17. Making a run for it 18. Longest Stocking Ever 19. Llama 20. Alpaca 21. J making friends with a llama (and lookit her beautiful shaw!) 22. Colorwork 23. Late in the day the sun started doing beautiful things with yarn 24. Lesson time 25. Read the dunce cap 26. Flame Tree 27. I had to wonder if this U-Haul was for a vendor or some lucky shopper! 28. This followed Melissa home (lucky girl)!

I shopped til I dropped, too:
Rhinebeck Stash

In this picture are:
– two kits from Holiday Yarns/the Tsock Tsarina (Oktoberfest socks and the Vintage Leaves) and a skein of Jennifer’s Sock Flock yarn in Candy Cane (which I think wants to be these socks
-from A Touch of Twist: four skeins of fingering weight Impressions in Oriental Lantern and Phoenix from the Ashes, which I think will make some awesome colorwork mittens; three skeins of Zephyr lace in Admiral blue. (These guys are my absolute favorites. They make great yarns, and Melissa bought her new wheel from them.)
-one skein Done Roving Happy Feet sock yarn in Cherry Pits
-two skeins of sock yarn from Sliver Moon Farm in Grape Ice, which I think would make really beautiful Rivendell socks
-two skeins of Socks That Rock, one in Loch Ness (hiding because I have Sekrit Holiday Plans for it) and one Rare Gem in a beautiful magenta
-copy of the Lenore socks pattern by the Harlot from last year’s Rockin’ Sock club
-many, many skeins from Wild Apple Farms 100% wool: one each of the red and natural for myself to make a christmas stocking (I have an idea for one with candy cane stripes and an afterthought heel) and ten skeins of the light sheep grey, which I think will make a smashing Eris cardigan/a>.
-autographed copy of Franklin’s
book.

Not a bad haul at all.
Then I fell asleep on the train home, took J to the museum on Sunday, and was so worn out by the end of the weekend I couldn’t even manage typing. And now the week is nearly over, and I have no excuses to not be working on my master’s capstone… except for the knowledge of all this new yarn, calling out to me. I need more arms, clearly.

Stories about socks.

Knitting’s like a virus. You catch it, it incubates, all of a sudden you start presenting all of these symptoms ( staying up all night working on a project, stashing, explaining the virtues of merino to complete strangers on the train) and then — THEN you start to infect other people.

Lately I’ve been in and out of the doctor’s office with one of those non-urgent but annoying issues that leaves you with lots of time to sit in a waiting room cooling your jets. So last time I went, like any good knitter, I brought a sock, and I sat in the waiting room and knit. I had other patients stopping me with questions, and then one of the receptionists demanded to see how I was turning the heel and asked me what the pattern was and proceed to pick my brain for good websites. Then they sent me into a room to wait, and the doctor came in, saw me knitting, and proceeded to exclaim over it for quite some time.

Well, today I was sitting in that same exam room, knitting while I waited for her to come in, and when she did, she pointed her finger at me. “You!” Me? I wondered if I’d bounced a check or something, when she starts laughing and waving her hand at my sock. “You’re the one. You came in with your knitting, and then I went and learned how and now I have no more free time and I never get anything done! Show me how you knit, I want to see how you make the stitches.” She wouldn’t let me leave until I’d spilled my guts about things like Knitpicks and Knitty and Ravelry, and promised to bring in some FOs for her to look over when I go back next.

I think I might bring her some yarn. Just to keep her symptoms from getting too out of control.



The socks in question:
Waving Lace Socks

Pattern: Waving Lace Socks, by Evelyn A. Clark. Published in Favorite Socks. (This is the pattern on the cover, even.)
Yarn: Lorna’s Laces Shepard Sock Multi in Watercolor
Needles: Bamboo DPNs, size 1
Notes: These are the first socks I’ve made with Lorna’s, and oh boy I think I’m in love. I wore them for the first time a few days ago, and they fit comfortably and smoothly. I was pleasantly surprised by the hand (foot?) of the fabric, and when they were on my feet I forgot there were socks there at all. More of this yarn, please.
The pattern was a lot of fun, and I’ll be repeating it at some point. The lace is easy to memorize and fun to watch coming off the needles, and it is solid and simple enough to stand up to a busy colorway like this one. I figured I’d take a chance and see how they two went together, and I’m glad they did. One thing for next time: I will be careful to read the first chart (for the scalloped edging) the right way – not backwards, making upside down un-scalloped edging. By the time I realized I was having some chart issues, I was halfway through the first sock, and the only solution was to repeat the mistake on the second one and call it a feature.

On a more solemn note, I dubbed these the “Grandmommy Socks” on Ravelry. My grandmother passed recently, and this sock was the last thing I’d knit in her presence. She actually examined the first finished sock the night before she died, was unimpressed with the colors — in her defense, the lighting in the hospital made the whole thing look like a rather muddy brown — and asked me how I made such tiny stitches. It took a while before I could pick them up, after that, but they are finally finished now, and every time I pick them up I think of her, and I expect I always will.
Waving Lace Socks


And if you check the Yarn Harlot’s blog post from her Brooklyn reading the other day, you’ll see me! I certainly got plenty of chances to see Stephanie:
Sisterhood of the Traveling Socks Yarn Harlot!

She did a great reading, and then proceeded to honor my good buddy and fellow stitchenbitcher Rebecca and her Eye of Jupiter sock with a moment of Internet Fame that I think is richly deserved. I got to watch Rebecca conceive and wrestle that sock into being, and I’m just tickled she made such an impression with it. Made an already enjoyable night even more awesome.

Fuzz Therapy

Er. Hi there. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Life seems to have gotten the better of my knitblogging for, oh, many moons. Clearly, this updating thing needs a little work.

But it’s not like I wasn’t knitting during all that! Oh, no, lots of knitting going on. I’ve gotten a good chunk of my Christmas knitting done, a bunch of socks, and two beautiful baby sets for old co-workers of mine who are both expecting new arrivals this autumn. And there was some stash acquisition over the summer in DC, Philly, and Toronto — but now stashing is mostly on hold, because Rhinebeck is just around the corner! (Franklin, or the Harlot…I’m torn!)

But this past week, I knit a very simple project: a pair of Fetching:
Mom's Fetching

My mom asked me, about a week and a half ago, if I could make her some sort of fingerless mitten-ey thing (her words) for her to wear in the mornings when she takes her walks. It was too cold first thing, she said, to go un-mittened, but not so cold as to need her fingers covered, and she wanted to be able to get to her keys easily. But — when you have time, she adds. (There is that small matter of a master’s thesis at the moment, you see.)

And I nodded, and mentally went through my stash, and said sure. I had some Knitpicks Wool of the Andes floating around, but she said no rush, so I pushed it to the back of my mind.

But we had a very bad day, last week, when a close relative was admitted to the hospital, and passed the following morning. It was a peaceful passing with family present, following a long and full life, but the next few days of wakes and funerals were difficult all the same, for my mom especially. And the brutal truth is that there’s really only so much you can do; each person has to work through their grief in their own way, and my mom did so by throwing herself into preparations and cleaning. I? I needed to keep my hands busy. So that day I cast on for some Fetching, with her request in mind.

Mom's Fetching

In between running around, the visitations, seeing other relatives, I cabled and knit. I have a sock on the needles, but I’d been knitting it while visiting the hospital and it seemed too raw to work on that. The Fetching were safe and easy and didn’t require any thought. Monday we buried my relative, and my family gathered together for a few hours to share a meal and comfort one another before everyone scattered back to their lives. With nothing else to do and fingers itching to be busy, I picked up the second Fetching and finished it, and wove in my ends. And the next day, I gave them to Mom to try on, and they fit perfectly.

Mom's Fetching



Pattern: Fetching
Yarn: Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Gold Kettle-dyed
Needles: US5 DPNs

Notes: I’ve heard varying reports about the new KP kettle-dyes, but the gold WotA I was very pleased with. It’s a subtle effect, and worked to highlight the cables instead of swallow them. I made a few modifications to this, based on prior iterations of this pattern. I cast on 50 stitches instead of 45 and worked one extra cable. I added a cable on both the top and bottom, making four cables beneath and two above. I also threw in a couple of extra rows before the thumb. I skipped the picot bindoff (I’ve found it curls and makes an unintentionally raggedy effect) and used the k2tog bindoff instead. The end result was much cleaner. There’s still a bit of curl happening, mostly on the first mitt I finished, but it won’t hurt anyone, and will be helped with a bit of a block. I’m really happy with how these came out.
Mom's Fetching