Recently, I Got Yarn. I also started a new sock, plus did some work on some older projects. Clearly, I am seeking distractions against the other sock I have to design this week....
( Several pictures below cut tags, with annotations and geeking )

Blocking Lace!

This is mokatiki's BRANCHING OUT, which she gave to me as a birthday present. To preserve my rapidly failing dignity, I won't tell you which birthday it was for. But today, with the help of a £15 playmat from an Amazon Reseller, I've pin-blocked it. Woohoo!

Updating my old 'get the knit' post. I'll link it in to my page links and probably post it to Dreamwidth later today.

Where to Get The Knit in the UK

I’m going to concentrate on fast, (relatively) inexpensive mail-order shops here, but you should know that my favourite walk-in knitting store, hands down, is I Knit London in Lower Marsh Street near Waterloo Station. They do some mail-order, but there are less expensive places to order wool online.

That said, here’s my take on UK mail order for wool. I’m not concentrating much on indie dyers, although we have some excellent ones. These are in no particular order; they’re just from my bookmarks.

• MCA Direct is a fantastic source of the kinds of wool you’d find in a haberdasher’s or a Hobbycraft. They sell all grades of acrylics, wools from Sirdar, Patons, Jaegar and Wendy. Their high end is Rowan wools and Regia sock yarns. They often have good closeouts on discontinued wools and sell project packs at a discount. Ordering from them is fast, direct, and personal; I got an apologetic email when I ordered something that had just been sold out, for example.
  
• Texere sells bulk wools on cones at pretty good prices. You can find all kinds of grades and blends, not all of which are suitable for handknitting. They do sell some balled yarns, but the thing you’d be looking for here is large amounts of yarn for specific projects.
  
• ColourMart has a fantastic array of fine laceweight to aran weight fibres. They specialise in cashmere, silk, and other high-end fibres, and their selection, while mercurial, is vast. Do not visit this site if you are a lace knitter with an online shopping addiction. You Have Been Warned. ;-)
  
• First 4 Yarns comes highly recommended. They’re another supplier of mixed yarns, including some higher end things.
  
• Get Knitted is a big mail-order outlet that recently opened a storefront in Bristol. They’ve been the ‘best’ UK mail order shop for a long time, and they carry knitpicks needles and other posh accessories.
  
• Socktopus is a mail order shop that caters exclusively to socknitters. They also have a storefront shop in London, but I haven’t been in. While they look good on paper and run a lot of workshops, their website selection is often thin or out of stock. I’ve never ordered anything from them.
  
• Knit N Caboodle is another big mail order supplier; they have Zauberball at better prices than anybody else, and they also sell ‘Purple Pins’ dpns, which are very cool to look at. I’ve recently heard stories that their fulfilment is slow and not great, but I’ve also had friends get instant responses from them, so your mileage may vary.
  
• Colinette Yarns sells directly from their mill although they’re also distributed worldwide. Their website is often the best place to find the perfect colour of whatever Colinette yarn you’re looking for, and fulfilment is pretty fast. I’m particularly enamoured of Jitterbug, their excellent multicoloured sockweight yarn.
  
• Angel Yarns is the only online shop I’d put in the ‘avoid’ category. Their website is not tied to their stock, apparently, because everything is listed as in stock, but you can wait ages (and I do mean ages) while they procure your stock. Highly annoying. I ordered twice from them while we were in Singapore, and they never managed to get an order right.

Please comment if you've got another online shop to add. I know we have lots of excellent indie spinners and dyers in the UK, so if you have a favourite feel free to post it in comments; I may try to include them in the list at some future point.

I should really just back away from Colourmart.

Right. Now.

At this point, I have copies of
The Ultmate Sourcebook of Knitting and Crochet Stitches,
The Vogue Stitchionaries,
The Encyclopedia of Knitting,
The Knitter's Bible,
The Ultimate Sourcebook of Knitting and Crochet Stitches; and
three of the four Barbara Walker Treasuries.

I'm working on some designs for a couple of pairs of lace socks.

But you know what? All those other books do not hold a candle to the Barbara Walker Treasuries. There's just more, and more interesting stuff, in them. Which is not to say you shouldn't get the others, but I'm finding the Walker treasuries much more valuable as a unit.

Just sayin'.

So, you know. I got yarn. I didn't pay for all of it, and what I did pay for was cheap, cheap, cheap.

( Eight photographs below the cut tag )


MCA Direct
The Knitting Goddess

Just saw this posted on the internet sock list:

Sock Innovation Errata.

Here's a glimpse of the continuing Summer Sliding Sock. I haven't worked on this sock since Saturday, since I've been down with flu and I really am not up for ticky or difficult knitting. It's teddy bear jumpers and a ditty bag for me at the moment.

I'm into the gusset increases at the moment and will turn the heel fairly soon.

I think the new needle is working. I kept the first sock on the 3.25mm needle and started this one on a 2.5mm. I was a little worried at first because the tension was visibly denser and I was concerned it wouldn't fit, but I think it's actually going to work out fine at this point. And yes, I like the green-to-yellowy-orange thing the other ball was doing a bit better than this, but we'll get to that point on this sock as well.

I'm really loving the way the colours are coming out on this sock. Thanks to everybody who encouraged me to knit this one: I think it's going to work out fine.

My only concern still is that the 3.25mm needles are not giving a very firm sock and that both the pattern itself and the garment will suffer for this. Then again, I still have my first pair of socks, made in sockweight Fortissima Socka, on 3.5mm needles, and they've held up fine. I can't help but think the pattern might look nicer with a firmer tension. The largest size for this fairly complicated sock is 70 sts around, so I had to find a tension that would give between 9.5 and 9.7 stitches per inch on 70 stitches. I settled on 7.5 stitches/inch on the 3.25mms, which will give me a sock 9.5" around -- half an inch smaller than my foot, but the sock should stretch.

It's still possible I'll rip this out; I need to see how the lace pattern looks once it's built a little more. I'll make a decision probably in the next two or three inches.

I am loving knitting with the Zauberball! It's unlike any other sock wool I've ever used in that it appears not to be plied. It's almost like a sock weight Lopi, only very soft and more than a little bit fuzzy. Despite its appearance in the ball, it does have variable thickness.

In order to knit the Summer Sliding socks, I had to go up several needle sizes, so depending on how the patterning looks, you may see a reluctant frog have to happen here. If that does happen, I'll drop back to the Magic Mirror socks, which have very similar construction. I'm thinking that the fuzziness of the Zauberball may make up for the 7.5 st/in tension, which is really working very well. I'm using Addi lace needles, which also help with the fuzziness. The designer wants 9 st/in, so I'm hoping that the general stretchiness of lace will forgive my tension sins.

You can see that the green is just beginning to lighten into yellow at the top of the toe there; I'm very interested in seeing how and where the colour changes will take place. Although I've experimented with Turkish cast-on before (and taught it in class -- that was the first time I ever did one!), this is the first pair of socks I've done a Turkish cast-on for, and I am in love. The seamless appearance of the toe is, to quote a world of supervillains, 'sheer elegance in its simplicity!'. And it allows an easy wedge toe on a toe-up sock without the bumps and jogs you get from the QK double cast-on or doing a provisional cast-on and picking up stitches!

I completed these last night and wove the ends in this morning.

( Three photos beneath cut tag )

To Knitting Software .Com, from whom I purchased the inexpensive Sock Wizard Mac application yesterday. There were two versions of their ordering website online, one with a download option and one without. The one with the download option did not work, so I ordered the software to be shipped, and this morning I sent an email asking if there were a downloadable version.

We went off to take pola_bear back to university early this afternoon, and I thought no more of it, figuring I'd get a response possibly on Monday. But when we stopped for lunch, I checked email via the iPhone and found that the lady from Knitting Software had already got back to me, apologising because they'd updated their website and those links weren't good, including a download link to the software and a note that she wouldn't be charging me for shipping!

And now on to the application, which looks great, if basic. It's essentially a full-service sock calculator, with a lot of options. Alas, it isn't customisable to the point where I could just plug in some parameters and change a sock architecture a la Cat Bordhi, but it offers cuff-down and toe-up options, patterns written for 4 or 5 dpn or 1 or 2 circulars, and a very nice variety of heels and toes, including a toe-up star toe which looks like fun—in three lengths, standard (crew) short (ankle) and knee. The website has photos of some of the heel designs. It makes patterns according to US shoe sizes, which may prove a bit of a problem for some, but there are plenty of online conversion charts that will tell you what your US shoe size would be. It does not allow adjustments for very wide feet/ankles/calves, but does enough of the basic maths that it will be possible to design the same sock in several sizes, aside from the charting of whatever pattern I want to use. The charting, of course, is what Stitch Visualizer is for. ;-) (subtle hint: my birthday is coming up!) :-D

I suspect I'll get seriously started on whatever I'm making with the Zauberball and try to clear some more UFOs before I settle down to knitting any socks from Sock Wizard-based patterns, but so far I'm pleased. The program is easy to use, produces simple, readable patterns that can be customised to my satisfaction and will need only basic tweaks to incorporate inventive patterning and whatnot, and it was quite inexpensive at $35 US.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about Sock Wizard in the days and weeks to come, but my first impression is very good.

I picked up this lovely wool on Wednesday at I Knit London, and now I'm thinking I may get a second ball of it if they still have it on Saturday.

Zauberball translates to 'magic ball', and I think that even in the ball it live up to its name. It's just alive with possibilities, isn't it? The wool comes in an astounding array of colours, not all of them this bright, I promise!


( Photos and pattern photo links below cut tag )

I've charted the lace pattern, which like so many of the patterns we love, was lifted from a Barbara Walker Treasury, with some bits added in for interest.
( Technical Bits )

Razor's Edge Sock Pattern (.pdf)

As if I didn't already have enough to do, I thought, "Hey, I'll design a pair of lace socks that will work well with self-patterning jaquard sock wool! Yeah! Let's do that!" Well, they've at least given me a chance to experiment a bit more with the square DPNs, which I still like.

( Three photographs, plus technical notes, beneath cut tag. Pattern to follow. )

Not just a modification; a "real" design this time. These were cast on last night, and they are moving pretty quickly at this point.

( Single photo below cut tag. )

Back in November, I posted a review of Kollage's "Square" circular needles. I hated them, because the cable is sticky like Gumby, even though the advertising is accurate in that the cable is definitely flexible. In fact, it's too flexible-- but you can read my review above if you're interested in knowing more about them.

On Saturday, I taught a beginning sock class at IKL, and we put everybody on 2.75mm DPNs. I think it's confusing, especially for relatively inexperienced knitters, if teacher is using a totally different method, so I borrowed a pair of the square circulars to knit this sock.

And you know what? I like them. For somebody who magic loops just about everything, that's a pretty big admission for me. They are comfortable in the hands, slick, and fast. If anything could make me go back to DPNs, at least for some projects, it's Square Double Point Needles. Of course, they're still very expensive (£8! for a single set of 5 needles at IKL), so I'm doubtful I'll be stocking up any time soon, but I really like them. Down sides are that just like other DPNs, it's easy to lose one, and at this price, yow. Plus, as they're metal, they won't fulfil my usual reason for having any DPNs at all, which is airplane knitting.

I'm beginning to think that using Brittany DPNs for so long may have coloured my judgment about DPNs in general. Perhaps if I'd tried some metal ones earlier, I would like them a little better in general, although I do have a set of Addi DPNs that I don't like at all. mithranstar has some cool electric purple aluminium DPNs that I'd like to check out, if only because they are PRUPLE. :) But the Kollage ones are a lovely brass colour, and they do make with the happy metallic clicky-clicky, so perhaps I can be satisfied with a few pairs of these. Because of the hefty price tag, I've committed to keeping the plastic shop cases around and storing them in those, in the needle case. Because losing one would be annoying, but losing two would be a disaster. :-/

There are a ton of sock knitting resources out there. On the Internet, you can find hundreds of free patterns, along with sock construction guidelines and tips for just about every kind of sock knitting you can imagine. And I only say ‘just about’ because I’m sure someone will think of something new. Maybe they are thinking of it right this minute.

Some of you know that last week’s sock class required me to begin rewriting a sock pattern on the fly, in a class with six students. Other chaos occurred as well, but what I’m now anticipating with dread is the fact that not all my knitters will be able to knit a complete heel flap, plus turn their heels, plus begin their gusset decreases, in two hours’ time. I’m halfway through my heel flap on this sock and intend to stop at the heel turn so I can demonstrate it on Saturday. All but one of the students in this class are relatively new or inexperienced knitters, and we were just getting into the swing of working in the round when it was time to end the class. Most of them are at the stage where they’re just sort of trusting the patterns they knit. They may have reached the, “I don’t like this pattern stitch, so I’m going to substitute another at the exact point,” stage. But nobody here is really knitting fearlessly, at least not yet.

Anyway, because I have to rewrite this pattern for my class, I thought I’d talk a little bit about sock construction, what there is out there, and how to do it without really thinking about it. No reason not to share that here. ;-)

Lots of my knitting friends know these tricks, but the truth is I can explain the basics of cuff-down sock construction in a series of simple bullet points.

( Basic Sock Formula )

Using this formula, you can make socks for anybody, using any kind of wool, on circulars or double points; it's your choice.

Please don't be intimidated by the maths. They are really very basic, and after knitting socks for donkey's years, I pretty much just know them off the top of my head.

Great books about sock knitting:

• The aforementioned Folk Socks. It's a great resource, although it's somewhat densely written. Like most books that try to do absolutely everything, some bits of it may not appeal to everybody.
  
• Sensational Knitted Socks provides a number of zipper patterns with lots of variations.
  
• Simple Socks, Plain and Fancy is a great resource for short-row heel socks, toe up and top down.
  
• Ethnic Socks provides a great introduction to socks and techniques from Eastern Europe and Turkey. If you like stranded knitting, this is a great one to play with.
  
• Cool Socks, Warm Feet presents itself as a pattern book for socks made from printed and self-patterning yarns, but there are some great technique notes in it as well.
  
• Sock Innovation, my newest acquisition, has already proven to be a great resource, full of fascinating design notes about how to make your socks spectacular and unique.
  
• New Pathways for Sock Knitters, which amazon lists as unavailable in the UK, is actually available. If you're ready to branch out, Cat Bordhi's book explains a number of different ways to handle sock shaping so that you can create some fascinating and fantastic socks.

Great Internet resources for sock knitting:

• The Internet Sock Knitters List Homepage. Here you'll find a lot of resources. If you decide to join the list, be aware that it is very, very chatty and high-traffic. I skim the digests when I have time, but I haven't been a regular poster to mailing lists in years.
  
• Knitting Socks provides tutorials and some tips and patterns. Google Ads on front page.
  
• A quick search on Ravelry reveals 557 matches for groups with keyword 'sock'.
  
• Ravelry also has a huge pattern database. The most popular sock pattern on Ravelry is currently Cookie A's 'Monkey', from Knitty. More than 8,000 Ravelry members are knitting or have knitted this sock. Ravelry lists 6,900 sock patterns, nearly 2,500 of them free.

Mm, this is a fun project.

( Three photos below cut tag )