And what of those Spring Forward socks? Well, according to the above photo, they appear to be motoring along nicely. Indeed, I’ve started on the second one.

But wait a minute – started on the second one before finishing the first?

Yes.

Of course, plenty of people do this – they knit their pairs of socks simultaneously, on a circular needle using the magic loop technique. But that’s not what’s going on here.

My friends, all is not rosy in the garden.

It was going so well! I’d turned the heel (with its delicious heel flap), and was haring along towards the toe, when I decided I’d like to try the sock on, just to see how it looked.

Blasted thing wouldn’t go over my heel! Sockblocked!!!

Now, the Spring Forward pattern says that the foot will stretch to 11 inches, and the leg to 12 inches. The circumference of my foot at the widest point (under heel, over front of ankle) is just short of 12 inches, so I’d thought it would be OK – after all, it’s the leg part that needs to get past that wide point.

Unwarranted assumption, alas. The leg part went on fine, but I got stuck at the heel turn. It almost worked – and oh, how I tried to make it work! – but in the end I had to concede the feet (sorry).

So what next? Clearly, the natural thing to do would be to stuff the project into a drawer and never speak of it again. Apparently I am an unnatural knitter, because instead, I did maths.

My sock will stretch to 11 inches at the heel turn, I said.
It needs to stretch to 12 inches.
One inch (the shortfall) is about 9% of 11.
I am working on 2.25mm needles.
9% of 2.25mm is 0.2mm.
2.25 + 0.2 is 2.45.
Therefore, if I use 2.5mm needles, that should give me the increase I need.

So that’s what I’m doing. The second sock up there is being knitted on 2.5mm needles, and if that works (I’ll check it once the heel is turned), I’ll frog the first one and reknit it.

Perhaps they’ll be done by spring.

Oh, friends, the swine flu thing has laid me low. (But not too low to start my post with an accidental iambic pentameter, I note.) I’m flattened. This is partly – even largely – because the Feaster has yet to shake the last few symptoms: he’s unusually limpetty, coughing and snotty, and sleeping like a baby … by which I mean, of course, that he’s up half the night, and hence so am I.

So it’s not too surprising that crafting activities around here have slowed to a crawl. Time to dig into the UFO files: that up there is a lace shawl in Rowan Kidsilk Haze, which I’ve been knitting since time immemorial, dammit.

If I ever knew what the pattern was called, I don’t now. It came by e-mail through a chain of friends, back in the pre-Ravelry dreamtime. I must try and trace it, in fact, because I’m uncomfortable using someone’s work without acknowledgement. I may even owe someone money, come to that.

[Edited: As evident from the comments below, this is Birch, by Sharon Miller, from Rowan 34, and it's available for free.]

It’s quite a thinky pattern, this, not really suitable for TV knitting – which is one reason it’s progressing so slowly. (Though that’s a Catch-22, because if I worked on it more often I’d eventually learn the pattern by heart, wouldn’t I?) I do like the fact that you start on the long side and work towards the point: by inclination I’m a front-loader of effort.

(The wine-glass thing looked better in my head, in case you’re wondering. There’s only so much setting up one can do in the 8-second intervals between nose-wipes and milk-feeds!)

So, you remember a couple of Sundays ago, I showed you some Lorna’s Laces sock yarn, and posited that the next thing I cast on might be a sock?

See that up there? That’s a Spring Forward sock, that is, cast on last week. I’ve had my eye on the pattern for ages, and I’m finally using some luscious artisanal yarn that two dear friends gave me for my birthday a while ago. (Glitz, Bias, I’ve lost the label, and I can’t remember where it came from – can you?)

I even learned a new cast-on for it (as per my goal): the “old Norwegian” or “twisted German” style, which gives a beautiful, stretchy edge.

Despite my slightly odd issues about socks, I’m really enjoying this. Making excellent progress, too: I turned the heel yesterday and am half way through the gussets. The yarn works beautifully with the pattern, which in turn is easily memorised and solidly satisfying.

I’m totally in love with the slipped-stitch heel-flap, moreover – so much so that I’m harbouring mad notions of one day making a jumper featuring that texture. Planning to knit a jumper in sock yarn is a symptom of something serious, I’m pretty sure. I may have to be talked down.

In the meantime, it’s lovely to be following someone else’s instructions for a change, because the purple thing is mired in intarsia and can’t be worked on except in good light with minimal interruptions. Which … yeah. Not such a feature of my life at the moment.

(The minimal interruptions part, I mean. The light’s fine.)

I am not the world’s greatest finisher of craft projects. I am also, truth be told, not the world’s greatest starter of craft projects. In fact, far too many of my projects reside only in my head, where they are no use to man or beast.

But let me talk about finishing.

The photograph above features me in the summer of 2004, a couple of weeks before I had the Oyster. I am wearing my trusty grey cardigan, which I love very much. (Indeed, I’m wearing it as we speak.)

I knitted this cardigan in around 2000, when Niall and I lived in our flat in Dublin 4. One day, seized by the feeling – you know what I’m talking about, yes? – I dashed to the late and much lamented Needlecraft on Dawson Street, and enlisted the help of one of the doughty proprietresses in choosing that grey Tivoli Aran and the pattern. “Something a bit fancy,” I said. I had a thirst on me for cables. She understood at once.

Back home, I cast on as soon as I could and knitted feverishly until I had finished the back, fronts, and sleeves. I sewed them together, made and attached the button bands, then picked up stitches for the collar. As I began to knit, it became clear that I wouldn’t have quite enough wool to make the six or eight inches called for in the pattern.

Not to worry! I would go and find some contrasting wool, in a darker grey, perhaps, or even green, and use it to finish the thing off. Then I’d add buttons. Job done.

I went and bought the wool – charcoal, I decided. I bought buttons.

They sat there.

The cardigan sat there.

One day, on a whim, I cast off the collar – just temporarily, you understand – and put the cardigan on.

And there the matter rested. I wore my grey cardigan with the not-quite-finished collar for years. I didn’t much like the way the two front halves arched towards each other at the neck (you can see that in the photo above), but it wasn’t a completely obvious mistake. If you’ve known me in person for any length of time, you’ve probably seen the cardigan, in the above state, many times.

I say “in the above state”, because that’s now a thing of the past. A few months ago, I finally sat down and tackled the finishing I’d planned all along: rolled edgings on the cuffs and bottom edge, extended collar. I even knew where to find that ball of charcoal wool, which in my house is nothing short of miraculous.

Here’s how it turned out. Look at it, in all its chunky-cabley-double-moss-stitchy glory. Aren’t those edgings just the thing to set it off?

I love the cuffs best, I think. I have a fiery nerdish passion for 2×2 rib rising from rolled stocking stitch (even better if it’s corrugated rib, as in Down in the Woods).

Shame about the collar, though. Impatient to finish, I cast it off after only a couple of inches. As anyone could have told me, the skimpy little thing refused to lie down, instead flapping weakly around my jaw and irritating the hell out of me whenever I passed a mirror. Not the effect I was after.

So I fixed it – after only another month or two of procrastination. Go me.

I still haven’t sewn on the buttons, by the way, because when I went looking for them, there they were, gone. Perhaps I’ll pick up some nice ones at the Knitting & Stitching Show. With fair seas and a following wind, I may even manage to sew them on before the cardigan’s tenth birthday.

It’s been more than usually mad around here these past few days, and I’ve been stalling on writing this post because I haven’t had a chance to take an up-to-date photo of the purple thing. But this evening the very lovely Niall helped me out, with his tripod and everything.

It fits! At least, the waist shaping fits. If anything, in fact, it’s a little on the snug side, but I reckon that’s no bad thing. I’m really liking the way the open yarn-over columns contrast with the denser twisted columns, and the verticals seem, on a hasty appraisal, to be flattering in just the way I’d hoped. You’ll have to wait until I model the finished thing to see the full effect.

As you may have guessed, it’s a tank top / slipover / sweater vest / whatever the cool kids are calling it these days. And strictly, it’s not “the purple thing” any more, now that I’ve added the contrasting yarn. (Don’t you love the shock of it, though? I’m considering working in a reference to Caesar’s blood here, but that may be … forgive me … overkill. As it were. Ahaha. I slay me. Look – I did it again! I’ll get me coat.)

That’s Noro Kureyon, by the way, which my Ravelry friends (hi!) may recognise as being left over from the Butterfly cardigan I made last year. This design decision stems purely from circumstance: I’m reasonably certain that two skeins of the Louet Riverstone wouldn’t be enough for what I want.

This is an experiment: I’m designing as I go. I reserve the right to rip it out, but for the moment, I rather like it. I find the sloped introduction of the Kureyon very pleasing, and the tighter V of the neckline division is a nice contrast. (You can’t see that properly yet, since I’ve only done one side.) My fervent hope at this point is that I didn’t decrease too far on the outer edge. If I did, it’ll have to be ripped, because I’m not having gapey armholes.

The back will be different – possibly with an intarsia picture of some sort. I need to be careful not to use too much of the purple, because I want to knit the armhole and neckline ribbing with it.

So that’s it. Tomorrow is Very Secret Mysteries day, when I’ll be writing about crochet. Until then, farewell.

The purple thing is breaking my heart. Or stabbing me in the back, as the title of this post suggests. Is it knitting karma, I wonder, after my smooth ride with Down in the Woods?

I took the above photo on Friday, preparatory to making a bubbly progress post to delight and entertain you. See it there? Forty-nine rounds in, just about to divide for front and back. Get a good look at it, my dears, while you can.

Yeah.

I ripped it all out.

It was about 20 stitches too big. I’m not sure if my tension is different working in the round (my swatch was back and forth), or if I somehow changed needles between swatch and cast-on (not impossible: things are pretty crazy around here at the moment), or if I simply have a lot to learn about negative ease (entirely plausible).

“It’s all wrong,” I said to Niall. “I’ll have to rip it out again.” For alas, this was not the first time. My first cast-on was based on a sloppy measurement, and when I rechecked it I ripped out the first ten rounds. My second cast-on was made through a bleary haze of exhaustion, and I twisted the bloody thing and started knitting a Möbius strip. That was only about four rounds long before I ripped.

Not like this time. Forty-nine rounds, I tell you. I felt each stitch unravel as though it were tangled around my guts. Niall was slightly astonished that I went through with it. “I didn’t think you’d rip it out,” he said. “I thought you might just, like, eat loads, or something.”

But I’ve been making clothes for long enough to know that if I’m not satisfied with something, I. Will. Not. Wear. It. With the best will in the world, it’ll simply lurk in my wardrobe until the end of time, making me feel sad whenever I catch sight of it. In the face of that, forty-nine rounds doesn’t seem so bad.

Fortunately, I’m persistent, and I’m going to knit this thing if it kills me (with long knives, in the town square, getting blood all over my toga, to extend my conceit just a little further).

To add insult to injury, I’m using the magic loop technique this time around, which is a little absurd for something this big, but taking off 24 stitches (for the pattern it had to be a multiple of eight) brought me down below the manageable round length for my 100cm Addi Turbos. At least it also means I’ll get through those forty-nine blasted rounds a little more quickly.

It’s pleasing me, at the moment, that I’ll be able to look at my purple thing (which will be glorious, I decree) and know that this is probably the most thoroughly knit yarn in my entire collection. (As you may recall, it started out as a scarf.) One takes one’s comfort where one can.

On that point, actually, the Louet Riverstone has held up amazingly well to the repeated knitting and ripping it’s endured. If you’re going to make a spectacular series of blunders, it’s a good yarn to choose!

First of all, I want to say a big huge HELLO and WELCOME to all the new readers who’ve joined us since I got it together to start actually telling people about this blog. It’s genuinely exciting to get comments and e-mails from you in response to a post I’ve written. It’s what this is all about.

A couple of you talked about how you are wanting to take up various crafts, either for the first time ever or for the first time in years. So I thought I might do a little series introducing the various crafts I do. (We bloggers, she said self-consciously, love our series.) Not a comprehensive primer, or anything – I’m thinking more of a personal take. Let’s make it a Wednesday thing for a while, shall we?

(OK, it’s technically no longer Wednesday. But it was when most of this post was written. I’m declaring it Wednesday, so there.)

Knitting, then: essentially, it’s a method of turning string into fabric. (Other methods include weaving, crochet, tatting, and knotting of various kinds.) This is done by looping the string systematically around two sticks. The thickness of the sticks and string together determine the texture of the fabric. (Yes, I’m deliberately making it sound strange. But that’s really all there is to it.)

With very few exceptions, you knit pieces to the size and shape you need, then join them together if necessary – and it isn’t always. Knitted fabric is very stretchy, which influences the ways in which it’s used. Pieces are usually joined by sewing them together, but there are other ways (e.g. crocheting through both edges).

Rectangles are the easiest shapes to knit. You cast on some stitches; you knit some rows, back and forth, in plain or purl or a combination of the two; you cast off. Bingo. If you go on for long enough before casting off, you have a scarf. Four rectangles make the simplest kind of jumper (front, back, two sleeves). Knit two fronts instead, each half the width of the back, for a cardigan.

You can get quite far with just these skills, but of course they are nowhere near the whole story. Increasing or decreasing the number of stitches in your row helps to shape the piece of knitting so that it conforms more pleasingly to the human form. A knitted edging finishes off the garment nicely. A decrease paired with a yarn-over makes a simple buttonhole.

Patterns of yarn-overs and decreases make lace, which can be as simple or as complex as you can handle. Knitting some stitches out of their normal order – again, systematically – makes a cable pattern. Knitting in the round makes a tube – you abandon the row in favour of a spiral. Short rows (where you don’t knit all the way to the end before turning) shape a piece in three dimensions. Entrelac allows multi-directional knitting.

Following a pattern is simply a matter of learning what the abbreviations and symbols mean. Well, and counting. You can count, yes?

I need hardly add that if you want to learn any of the abovementioned skills, there are plenty of online resources to help you – try the extensive archive of free articles at Knitty.com, for a start, or search You Tube for tutorial videos. Better still, find someone who can show you in person. If you’re keen, look for a local group – or start one. And join Ravelry, for goodness sake.

(If you like learning from books, I’ve mentioned some of my favourites in this post over here.)

Different crafts have different rates of production. With some, like plain sewing, you can cover a huge amount of ground in relatively little time. With others, like crochet lace, you labour for millennia over every cm². Knitting is somewhere in the middle, at least among the crafts I’m familiar with.

When I go back to knitting after sewing for a while, my progress seems glacial. It’s actually kind of dizzying to contemplate the sheer number of stitches in a knitted garment, each of which had my attention for a tiny period of time. Perhaps if I were to spin my own thread and weave my own cloth, I’d have the same feeling about a sewn garment. The specialisation of labour insulates us from a full appreciation of the work that goes into such things.

(There’s a parallel with construction here, actually: we’re just finishing up an extension project in our house, and watching the builders at work has made me look at brick walls with an entirely new respect.)

But I love the portability of knitting, the way you can just slip it into your daily life. No big equipment, very easy to put down and pick up again if you’re interrupted, minimally perilous to small children – really, what’s not to like?

The photo above is of the Oyster’s knitting needles and wool. He hasn’t really tried to knit (other than “his way”, which bears only a frail resemblance to the real thing), but I have hopes that he’ll learn in the next couple of years. That would give me so much glee, you’ve no idea.

I’m on a serious design jag at the moment – finishing Down in the Woods and starting the purple thing in the past week. I’ve been knitting my own designs for (good lord) twenty years now, and I was asking myself this evening, have I learned anything useful? One or two things. Here – have a handful.

1. Swatch, swatch, swatch

Swatch. You may (like me) be a bit adolescent about swatching for other people’s designs (oh, Muuuuum, do I haaaaave to?), but trust me, swatching is your friend. Swatch for gauge, certainly, but also:

• Try out stitch and colour ideas.
• Check whether the transitions you’re planning will work in practice.
• Decide how you’ll cast on and off.
• See what sort of fabric your chosen needles produce – you may want to shift up or down a size.

2. Try out textured stitches in cotton

If you’re wanting to use a complex stitch, try knitting up a swatch in cotton with your various options. Dig out your favourite stitch library, if you have one (I love the Harmony Guides – details at the end of the post), and knit an inch or two of anything that takes your fancy. It’s a fun way to spend an afternoon. You may end up using only one of the stitches you try out, but the exercise is useful for a couple of reasons.

• Cotton has no loft to it, so you can really see the structure of the stitches and get a feel for how they might work in your garment.
• Different stitch patterns yield different widths over the same number of stitches – forewarned is forearmed.

3. Borrow dimensions from an existing garment

No need to reinvent the wheel spindle whorl. Base your dimensions on a similar knitted garment whose fit you like. Knitted fabric is very forgiving, fit-wise, so you don’t need to be 100% precise – go with what fits your stitch count and overall design.

4. Use techniques that suit you

The legendary Elizabeth Zimmerman declared straight out in Knitting without Tearsthat the main reason she knitted so much in the round was that she hated purl. Hear this: you don’t get extra points for slogging through techniques that give you no joy.

So if holding teeny needles makes your hands ache, use bigger ones. Or if you hate seaming, don’t do seams. (Aside: Actually, if you hate seaming, get hold of The Knitter’s Book of Finishing Techniques. It changed my knitting life.)

On the other hand, if you do a mean tubular cast-on, adore beading, go all squishy at the thought of crocheted edgings, well, knock yourself out.

5. Count twice, knit once

Not as crucial as the sewing rule “measure twice, cut once”, since you can always rip out your knitting (unless the yarn’s really hairy, in which case you’re doomed). But if you’re anything like as impatient as I am, you’ll want to do the actual work as few times as possible – ideally once.

So take your gauge. Take your dimensions. Take your calculator. Sit with them in Zen-like communion (you know that means “do the sums”, yeah?), and then write down your magic numbers. (Incidentally, if you’re designing for an adult woman, this free sizing spreadsheet from Josi Hannon Madera looks pretty amazing, though I should note that I haven’t used it.) Work out row lengths, increases and decreases. Trust the numbers. Then take a deep breath, and start knitting.

6. Keep track like a fiend

Write everything down. Even if you’re not planning to make a fair copy of your pattern, you’ll at least need to know how many rows you knitted on the back before beginning the armhole shaping, or where your sleeve increases are. Also, for all but the simplest patterns, you’ll more than likely come to a point where the stitches on your needle don’t look like you thought they would, and you’ll have to tweak things. Keep a note of what you do – you’ll be glad of it.

Doing these things won’t turn you into Kim Hargreaves or Ysolda or Di Gilpin, of course, but they should help your designs to come out the way you’d planned.

Links to Amazon.co.uk
The Harmony Guides: Knit & Purl Stitches: 250 Stitches to Knit
The Harmony Guides: Cable & Aran Stitches: 250 Stitches to Knit
The Harmony Guides: Lace & Eyelet Stitches: 250 Stitches to Knit
Knitting without Tears(Elizabeth Zimmerman)
The Knitter’s Book of Finishing Techniques(Nancie M. Wiseman)

Links to Amazon.com
The Harmony Guides: Knit & Purl: 250 Stitches to Knit
The Harmony Guides: Cables & Arans: 250 Stitches to Knit
The Harmony Guides: Lace & Eyelets: 250 Stitches to Knit
Knitting Without Tears(Elizabeth Zimmerman)
The Knitter’s Book of Finishing Techniques

I cast on the purple thing last night. It’s flying along now – I’ve done almost 10cm. But I wanted to show you it in its newly cast-on state, because I love that. Just a few rows done, the pattern barely discernible – it’s such a hopeful little ribbon of knitting.

(See what I posed it on for the photo? Do you? Gosh, I am witty.)

I used a cabled cast-on, for a nice stable edge – I don’t want it too stretchy.

My grandmother taught me to cast on like her, by knitting into the last stitch and putting the new loop back on the left-hand needle. (The cabled cast-on is very similar but makes a nicer edge, if you ask me.) This was circa 1980, when I was five or six. My grandmother didn’t tell me that hers was only one of several methods – in fact, I’m not sure if she realised.

I’d been knitting for decades before I found out that there was more than one way to cast on. I must be seriously conservative when it comes to my craft methods, because the only other cast-ons I’ve tried are provisional (which I used for Down in the Woods) and tubular (which I’m madly in love with, though I’m not entirely convinced that my feelings are requited).

When I think about it, the cable cast-on has more or less replaced my grandmother’s way (which is known as the “knit cast-on”, incidentally) as my default Here I Am Starting To Knit Something position.

So there’s a tiny little goal for the rest of 2009: explore casting on. What’s your favourite method?

I rarely manage to complete a project in its proper season, and this is no exception: here’s the Oyster’s new winter jumper, which I’ve finished up in some of the hottest weather Ireland has seen in years.

It’s a cuddly collared raglan in Debbie Bliss Donegal Luxury Tweed. This is a fabulously soft yarn, despite its rugged appearance. The Oyster chose it himself – quite a while ago, now – on a visit to This Is Knit.

It’s knit on 5mm needles, with 4.5mm for the ribbing. Traditionally seamed, with the rolled edgings knit in the round after the sewing up was finished.

Overall, I’m delighted with how this turned out. I started out knowing only that I wanted corrugated ribbing with rolled edges, and some kind of pattern on the body. (I thought it might be an all-over pattern, but in fact I think the understated band of lattice I ended up with works really well.) The idea for the collar came next, and then all I needed to do was work out how to join it all together. I based my dimensions on a fairly fitted cotton ribbed jumper from H&M. I confined the ribbing to the sides, added a little more ease and changed the collar design.

I’ve called it Down in the Woods because of its teddy-bear cuddliness, but also because the colour choices were motivated by the Oyster’s ever-verdant Robin Hood obsession.

Celebrations

• Edgings! I absolutely love the way the corrugated ribbing rises out of the rolled edge. I think it’s my favourite bit.
• Collar! The Oyster has an enormous head (ask me how I know), and jumpers of this design, with an opening part way down the front, often end up too tight on the neck long before he’s outgrown them in other ways. This collar is Enormously Clever, I tell you. It’s super-stretchy, and it involved no sewing or picking up of stitches. It worked just as I hoped, and I feel very smug about it!
• For the colour work, I took the opportunity to teach myself two-handed knitting, which was a revelation. I doubt I’ll ever go back to laborious one-handed colour changes for work like this.
• The two-handed style also greatly simplifies a technique advocated by Di Gilpin, whereby you catch the unused strand down on each stitch. (You don’t need to do this – every three stitches is fine – but if you do, you get a beautifully dense, consistent fabric, and the back looks fabulous.) Holding the pattern strand in the left hand allows you to “aim” the right needle on each background stitch without any faffing.

Lessons

• The jumper I based my dimensions on has very fitted sleeves. I made these ones a little bigger: they fit fine, but they’re still tighter than I was planning. Next time I do sleeves like this I’ll leave more space under the arms.
• I used the 4.5mm needles to knit the collar, which left it just a shade less generous than I’d have liked. Not enough to rip and redo, but if I make another of these I’ll use the larger size needle.
• The edgings look beautiful, but my casting off could have been looser. Quite a bit looser, in fact. The waist and cuffs have to be eased on rather more carefully than I’d like. This, I may actually frog and fix, because regular yanking around will shorten the life of the edgings.
• For corrugated ribbing, I must remember to twist the colours at the first changeover in future. I didn’t do this for the first few rows of the front, and had to sew down the resultant flaps. I can tell, but only if I look closely.
• This yarn has very little tensile strength. Sewing up was frustrating at first, because the yarn kept fraying and breaking; in the end I resorted to using extremely short lengths. Lots of ends to sew in, but that’s OK.

That seems like a lot of lessons for something I’m so happy with, but hey, there it is. The Oyster, for his part, tells me he loves it, which is always nice to hear!