So the only Christmas knitting I’m doing (for her, it would actually be Hanukkah knitting!) is a pair of socks for Anna. She’s still a college student, so I have to use superwash yarn that’s tough enough to withstand college machines; this is KnitPicks Stroll Tonal (golden yellow), and it’s the Kai-Mei pattern by Cookie A, which I knit once before. I’m telling you, it’s an absolute blast to knit, and how often do you end up with socks that have a right sock and a left sock?

i really ADORE this pattern

I finished the first sock in a day and a half, and I’ll cast on the second sock tonight. When I finish it, I’ll get back to my beautiful Audrey in Silt.

Happy Wednesday y’all, and if you’re in NYC, stay dry! I have to be out and about all afternoon, and am starting to hate the weather gods, who give us reliably rainy weather on Wednesdays. Come on. Shift it over a day to Tuesdays or Thursdays, at least once in a while.

angee, in knitpicks felici

I did round 1 swatching for my Mothed sweater and didn’t like the fabric; I need to swatch again, going down a needle size. It was just too thin and kind of gauzy, and not what I’m going for, really. I persist, like a real grown-up knitter!

Other parts of the NE got snow, and we were supposed to but mercifully we didn’t. It is gray and drizzly, though, so it’s that kind of April Fool’s Day. I hope you aren’t fooled today (unless you want to be)!

• Marnie’s husband Tom knocked it out of the park yesterday, in celebrating her birthday:  yesterday he made her breakfast in bed, and mid-morning he showed up at her office with a tissue-wrapped mystery birthday box and a tulip and a box of gluten-free cookies. When she got off work at 12:30, he took her to the butterfly sanctuary to give her summer warmth (they live in Chicago), then to private ballroom dancing lessons, then to the movies for the Oscar-nominated animated shorts, followed by a sushi dinner, ending with a night at the Belden-Stratford hotel, a historic place. Nice way to celebrate my daughter, sweet son!

• Tomorrow I’m heading out to the Delaware Water Gap for a day trip, to help me not sit around dwelling on the historical details of the date for me.  I also bought two pots of daffodils, which have always made me so happy — who can be too sad when they see daffodils! What amazing things they are.

• My daughter Katie is hilarious. She keeps a blog but it’s private, so I can’t just give you a link but I’ll paste her most recent post here, to give you a laugh too:

Dear Adele,

I hate you.  My husband and I were watching you on Letterman earlier this week performing “Rolling in the Deep” from your new album, 21.  He asked, “Why is it called that? Is she 21 or something?”  To which I replied, “No way!  She’s much older than that.”  I looked it up.  You’re not.  You’re 22 now.  I hate you.  You’ve won 2 Grammys and are widely accepted as being awesome, and you’re only 22.  Your videos seem to be saying, “Hi Katie, I’m Adele and I’m 6 years younger than you.  What have you done with your life?”  Well, Adele, I organized my files yesterday and today I’m going to clean the kitchen.

I hate you.  Stop being so good.

Sincerely,
Katie

I can’t read that without cracking up, no matter how many times I read it.

• Ongoing scheduled and spontaneous meetings with Will — twice this week already, including last night’s spontaneous get-together at a neighborhood pub. Very sweet.

my frequently-worn handknit sweaters: Dark & Stormy, Peasy, and Mondo Cable Cardi. Unending love and adoration and disbelief, my hands made all that fabric, one little stitch at a time

ignore the fact that this photo looks like a catfish, this is the current state of Will's black socks. I stupidly just tossed it in my bag and a bunch of the stitches fell of the needles. OOPS. Not happy making, but the picture makes me giggle.

So what’s one difficult little day in the midst of all this? Tomorrow will come and go, and it’s embedded in all kinds of things, all kinds of life all around it. I always know this, it just sometimes gets kind of dark in here.

black flippin socks

I’m knitting black socks, because my son wanted them. Black. Socks. Of which I could buy a dozen for $2. Black socks. Me, with my feeble eyes, living in my sun-unlit apartment in wintry Manhattan. Black socks he’ll wear to work and probably throw in the machines at the laundromat in his neighborhood, followed by a tumble in the giant dryer.

And every stitch I strain my weary eyes to see is formed with oopy-goopy love for my boy. Who wants black socks that his mom knitted for him.

*Yarn courtesy of a sweet sharing by Sara over at Wool Durham – swing by her blog, if you don’t already know it!

No I didn’t. Ha, so there. Fooled you. It’s defeat, yes, and it’s de feet. Last night I pulled on my beautiful lovely wonderful favorite socks, my kai-mei in tosh sock, and what did my shocked eyes see?

NO!!!!!

I finished them April 29, 2010 (my anniversary, coincidentally!), so I haven’t even been wearing them a year. And they’re in rotation with all my other handknit socks, which I only wear during cold weather, so this is entirely unacceptable I must say. Really. Perhaps Tosh Sock is not meant to be used for socks, silly me. Do I take good care of them? Why yes I do. Handwash, air dry, lotsa care. Maybe I have bad feet? Why no I don’t.

Of course the only remedy is to make another pair of kai-mei, but I’ve learned my lesson and won’t be using Tosh Sock for socks, ever again. I’m all about the process, love knitting, loved making the kai-mei especially, but I don’t expect to get just a few wearings before the yarn disintegrates. For heaven’s sake.

I had big trouble with another madelinetosh yarn (merino, in this case), which I used for my Mondo Cable Cardi. I’d had it on for maybe 2 seconds (3, to be generous) when the whole thing turned into a giant thick pill. All that work, and it looks like a bad sheep’s fleece. I could continuously scrape off the pills, but I’m not kidding, the pilling happens faster than I can get them off. It’s strange to be complaining so bitterly about a yarn I’ve been so in love with; I do still adore the colors, she’s an amazing colorist, but the yarn bases have now let me down twice. Hmm. That’s a lot of money to pay.

Anyway, one more turn of the feet, and another Cookie A sock (angee) — here’s Katie’s next pair. One sock down, the other sock is now at the mid-foot region.

Katie's Paddy Socks -- Angee (CookieA of course)

This is KnitPicks Felici, in the sold-out colorway called green vegetables. It hasn’t been the best quality — there have been a number of places where the plys were abraded and the yarn was down to a lone-ply holding itself together. What’s up, you yarn makers you?!

Anyway. Sidetracked. When Katie was here, we went through my stash and I sent her home with some pretty yarns to get her own stash going. She saw this green KnitPicks Felici, which I’d bought when I got the pink Felici for Marnie’s socks. Actually, I’d bought the green specifically to make socks for Katie, but then it got buried in my stash — you know how that goes — and newer yarn, newer projects, life, time, all intruded and I forgot all about the green yarn until we saw it. She’s knitting her first pair of socks, so I cast on this new green pair for her, hoping that we’d both hit the heels around the same time so I could walk her through it before she went home. Here’s the current status of the pair I’m making for her….and boy, does that springy green lift my winter-laden spirits. I’m dying for lack of color in the city, so I just glance at the socks and imagine the spring:

soft to touch, happy to look at, GREEN.

This is a Cookie A pattern, Angee, so it fits my sock-knitting mind. Top down, fun, and attractive. The Felici colorway is called ‘green vegetables’ and I really like the particular shades of green. Katie should be wearing these by St Patrick’s Day, to be sure. After all, I finished Anna’s birthday socks in one week, so I can certainly get these knocked out, despite everything that’s going on in my life.

We’re looking at a sunny, mild weekend (40s! Whee!), and I may be going shopping with Will on Saturday. The boy needs a winter coat in the worst possible way, and I’m not fooled by this temporary respite from winter. Oh no, not me. I’ve fallen for that before, thinking winter was over in April. Ha. As our former president said, “fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”

I just like to pretend he was a comedian, and he meant to say the things he said (now that he’s out of office and can’t hurt us any more).

I got Anna’s birthday socks finished inside one week, which is slow for lots of people but not for me! It’s a fun pattern to knit, and free, so double winner. The color does remind me of a Texas summer sky, so since she’s a yankee living in Houston I think she’ll like them.

anna's 20th birthday socks, done in 7 days go me!!

The combination of almost 0 hours of sun so far this year, plus EVERY project I’ve finished in 2011 is blue, what’s up with that, led me to seek something that’s a big punch of color. When I glanced down into my huge and overflowing knitting bag (which is really a repository of any yarny thing that happens into the living room), I saw my Zauberball, which is red and cherry and purple and blue and all combinations in between. It made me think of summer berries, and boy that’s just what I need, here in the bleak and grim ending of such a snowy January. I had been so inspired by perches’ gorgeous Zauberball shawl and had planned to make one for myself, but I’m on a very rigid no-yarn no-pattern purchasing diet so I had to do something different.

I didn’t really find it all that much fun to knit, but whenever I wear my baktus, I get loads of compliments. I hadn’t realized there was a lace version when I made the last one, so I’d planned to make a 2nd one with lace. Then Eskimimi came along and did a variation on the plain baktus, striping two halves of a Zauberball skein. So I decided to assemble these variations into one thing — an Eskimimi version plus lace. Here it is, all together:

i really like this section - the stripes are showing up

it's becoming more a muddled purple mess

But see what’s happening? By the random luck of striping, both balls are in the same color right now, so the striping has disappeared. Still, it’s interesting to watch the shifts in colors, so I’ll keep going for a while. I’m not committed to it, so if I don’t like it all that much I’ll frog it and find a free shawl. The yarn is so lovely — be sure to check out perches’ shawl to see what I mean. Really, beautiful.

And speaking of perches, she’s got a month-long thing going called building winter; read this post of hers for details. This week, I have

relied on daydreams of green and warmth and summer; kind and warm words from my friends……

slogged through trying to teach college students the concept of means, averages, etc., and going nuts that they can’t seem to get it; deep and icy-cold puddles of brown filthy snow melt at every corner; a couple days of serious pain in my sheck…..

cherished my sweet sweet daughters and their loving communications; the fact that I get to work at home, which is especially wonderful when the weather is so miserable; the fact that even though it’s sometimes a slog, I get to be in this world again each day.

Happy Sunday, y’all.

But I did stay up late and finish sock #1, so in the hope of closing my weekend on something approximating a high note, here’s sock #1 of Anna’s 20th birthday socks. The color really is summery lovely, and balm for a bitter winter spirit. Here’s to a much better week!

So then, thinking of one end of the pendulum made me think of a pit of melancholy, which took me then to Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum, which opens with these great lines:

I was sick, sick unto death, with that long agony, and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence, the dread sentence of death, was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears.

And then that reminded me of Kafka’s deeply horrifying story, In the Penal Colony. And then, after all that descent into horror, I remember: wait! I was going to show you some pretty socks!

Anna's 20th birthday socks, Komet

They’re the Komet socks by Stephanie van der Linden. If you think the color is familiar, you’re right. I originally bought this color — Sweetgeorgia in summer skin — and I must’ve been drunk or insane, because I bought it specifically to make these socks. But I bought it in worsted weight. WHAT was wrong with me. I’d planned to make socks for my youngest daughter Anna, who turns 20 early in February, so I showed it to her when she was home over the break. I actually gave her a choice of this color or another, and she picked this color.

The day after Christmas, I picked up the yarnWHAT?! Worsted weight, was I insane (I ask myself this question a lot)? I immediately went online and ordered a skein in sock weight. And I just got it yesterday, almost a month later. Note to self and to y’all: don’t order from Sweetgeorgia if you need something in anything approximating a hurry. I’ll have to get the socks in the mail by Saturday 2/5 to get them to her in time, so I’ve got to focus and get them done. Other people can knock a pair of socks out in that amount of time, I just don’t know if I can. I imagine I’ll be knitting all weekend. Like that’s a bad thing.

Another snowstorm last night — what’s that, the 3rd one so far this year? And today’s only the 21st? Hope it’s warm where you are, and if it’s not, I hope you get to stay inside and knit.

this is it. a yard and a half.

With each row, I went through this pair of thoughts: “Oh, no problem, I’m definitely going to have enough yarn.” “OH NO, problem, there’s no way it’s going to last.” But it did last, obviously, and now he owns a pair of socks knit with madelinetosh (tosh sport, colorway tweed) and my love.

his tweedie-pie socks

I still can’t quite believe he let me knit something for him. He’s not (like, at all) a guy who wears sweaters or scarves, so maybe this is just the first of many pairs of socks I can sneak into his drawer.