Eskimimi Knits knitting blog

Short rows for socks, part I: Why and when.

I mentioned a few days ago my love for short row toes when making socks. I rarely resort to using another toe, and most deviations from my normal short row version have proven disappointing to me. As far as I am concerned, shape, smoothness of fabric and comfort are the most important factors for a good sock toe. Some people may compromise on one or more of these for speed or simplicity of knitting, but if I am going to spend hours knitting a sock then I always believe it is worth putting in the extra 10 minutes to make the most comfortable toe I can.

Short row heels are another matter entirely. I’m quite happy to try whatever heel a sock pattern suggests when I am following somebody else’s design. If I am knitting a plain stockinette sock, or a sock of my own devising, then I choose a heel that best fits the design and the yarn.  An afterthought short row heel is fantastic for instances where the yarn you are using has a strong pattern of regimented, predictable stripes.  If a standard ‘flap and gusset’ heel is worked in this yarn it will break up the steady pattern of stripes on the top of the foot.

Other forms of ‘afterthought’ heel may work, but again the smoothness of a heel without decreases makes the short row heel my preferred choice, and the result is both attractive and professional from all angles.

Short row toes and heels are also multi-functional – one simple set of instructions will work in all instances where a short row heel or toe might be used.  The toe and heel are worked in exactly the same manner, and when you have knit one it is likely that you will never need to consult the directions again.

• Top-down toes: when you reach the point in your sock where you want to knit your toe, put the bottom half of your total number of stitches on some scrap yarn (you could leave them on the needles, but it makes manoeuvring your needles easier if they are on scrap yarn), knit the short row toe, then kitchener stitch the end stitches to the stitches on the scrap yarn.
• Toe-up toes: Using scrap yarn, provisionally cast on half the total required stitches for your intended sock circumference, knit the short row toe.  When complete remove the provisional cast-on and place these stitches onto your needles – you are now ready to begin knitting your sock in the round.
• Top down/toe up heel in situ: When you reach the point in your sock knitting where you wish to place your heel, put half of your stitches (the half intended for the top of your foot) onto scrap yarn.  Knit the short row heel on the remaining half of your stitches.  Once complete, remove the scrap yarn to free your live stitches and continue working in the round.
• Top down/toe up heel (afterthought): When you reach the point in your sock where you later wish to knit your short row heel, drop your working yarn and knit across half (the half intended for the back/heel of the foot) with scrap yarn.  Drop this scrap yarn and re-knit over these same stitches with the working yarn, and continue to work in the round.  When you come to later knit the heel, remove the row of scrap yarn stitches, one by one, leaving two rows of live stitches.  Place the lower half of these stitches onto scrap yarn and the top half onto your needles. Knit a short row heel and kitchener closed with the awaiting stitches on the scrap yarn.

Coming soon: Short rows for socks, part II: How to make them.

I carp? I have carped? I have carpented? I have worked with sticks and yarn! Hold on; that’s what I always do. But this time I have worked with BIG sticks in a carpentry fashion. I have joined (two or more pieces of wood). OK, so I am no Thomas Chippendale (of the furniture rather than slimy oiled gyrating man fame), but today I sawed the end off of a broomstick! And with the use of a bit of duct tape and some scraps of yarn I made myself a niddy noddy:

OK, so it isn’t a beautifully turned and polished work of art, but even if I had the funds to spent £40+ on a ‘nice’ niddy noddy the Make Do And Fudge Together part of me would have sought out an alternative.  So, for the grand total of  £1.17 (68p broomstick, 49p duct tape) I have a fully functioning, perfectly operating niddy noddy with which to skein up my dyed yarns.  I didn’t even trouble a hammer and nails for this Blue-Peterish bit of self-made woodworking.

If scientists ever manage to fully investigate the continental plate edges at the bottom of the ocean they will find that the earth is held together with duct tape and bits of string. I have no doubt that this niddy noddy will be around just as long as the continents.  In fact, long after humans have become extinct, there will still be hastily constructed items all over the land, all held together, protected and maintained by duct tape and string.  They will be our ‘fossils’  Beings millions of years from now will find these remains and wonder ‘what manner of creatures were these?’

Dear Kaffe,

I think that you have known for some time now that I love you and your colours. I think that you are a genius.

But you are an evil, twisted genius.

Lots of love,

Mimi xxx

As I am having a self-imposed day of ‘fun stuff’ to try and replicate the sunny weather in my general well-being and happiness, I decided that it would be a good opportunity to pull out those packets of Kool Aid that I brought down to London with me and brighten up some yarn. Now, this is my first attempt at dyeing anything via any method, but the relatively innocuous substance of a powdered fruit drink, kindly sent to me as a surprise gift, seemed a good place to start.

Kool Aid is probably familiar to most Americans, but readers in the UK may not be so familiar with this beverage. Bought in small sachets of only 6g, Kool Aid is a super concentrated, super saturated drink powder. The food dyes in this drink are powerful enough to dye wool, and unlike when dyeing with other acid dyes you do not need to add vinegar as there is enough acidity in the powder to give the correct PH level for the dye to take. And people drink this in volume. Oh, and they add sugar, but you won’t be needing that if you intend to use it for its secondary, unintentional use.

I discovered by the power of Google that all you need to dye your own yarn with Kool Aid is some yarn (I guess you figured that bit out for yourself, but you want a 100% animal fibre yarn for best results – man-made fibre won’t work) some Kool Aid (one or more sachets depending on if you want a single colour, pastel shades or more saturated hues) a microwaveable receptacle and a microwave.

I started off by tying my yarn in a big skeined length, because I wanted to create a self-striping yarn.  I made the skein by wrapping the yarn over the edge of a 4ft table (so the skein is about 8ft in circumference) and tying in a few places with figure-eight ties so the yarn didn’t tangle.  The next step was to soak the yarn in a sink of cold water for 15 minutes whilst I mixed the Kool Aid.

I used two colours of Kool Aid (Lemon-Lime and Cherry) and mixed each with about ½ pint of cold water.  Then I inhaled – it really does smell quite lovely!  I was tempted at this point to decant some with a little more water and some sugar and give it a try, but I didn’t think my teeth would forgive me so I resisted.

I then had a moment where I suddenly realised that I hadn’t adequately planned my next step.  I couldn’t find two microwaveable containers that would fit in the tiny microwave side by side, to allow me to dip each half of the skein into separate colours.  Settling on a ‘dish within a dish’ set-up I poured the green mix into the smaller container, and then sat that in the larger container of red mix.

I placed the yarn into the dye baths with half of the yarn in the green mixture and the other half in the red concoction, using a fork to make sure that all of the yarn was submerged to the best of my ability.  Where the two colours meet there is a section of orangey yellow, which I really love. It is a very short length – two or three inches, but it reminds me of fruit salad chew sweets from my childhood.  Anyway, once I was happy I zapped it in the microwave for two minutes.  I inspected, stirred the yarn a bit more with a fork, prodded and poked and then zapped it for another two minutes.  After another prod followed by a three minute zap I decided that it would do.  Much of the dye had no been pulled into the yarn and the liquid it was resting in had a much greater degree of clarity.

I then showed much more restraint than I usually do and walked away.  I resisted the urge to look, to prod, to inspect, to fiddle and I let it be.  The intention is to let it cool to room temperature.  Now if it was a cup of tea on a sideboard, interrupted by a marketing spam phonecall, it would go cold in the blink of an eye.  But much like a watched pot never boils, this watched dish of yarn would not cool.

After what seemed like hours I decided it was cool enough and removed the yarn into a sink of cool water to rinse and relax.  Hardly any dye came out of the yarn at all in my rinses.  Superb.

A quick squeeze in a towel and a spell on the balcony on this warm et breezy day and the yarn is complete.  I think this deserves a drum roll…

Ta-dah!

_{Kool Aid is available in supermarkets in America and various other countries, but is hard to come by in Europe due to a EU ruling on food colourings linked to child hyperactivity.  It is available to purchase from specialist American food retailers online, on eBay and also various yarn and dye companies, regularly sold for the exact activity above, though if you have friends or relatives in the US it might be cheaper if you request that they send you some.}

I wrote an entry for today’s theme, ‘a new skill’, this morning. In that post I spoke of my first attempt at intarsia when knitting a blanket square in remembrance of my grandad, and how though I know I could knit intarsia I didn’t feel much enjoyment in it, and how if I could perhaps learn how to be organise each of the little bobbins and strands of yarn so that they did not annoy and frustrate me in their entanglements, I might gain the skill to enjoy this form of knitting. But then, as I sat and ate my lunch and pursued Etsy and eBay, looking for a cheap drop spindle and some fibre as I so often do in quiet moments I realise that actually that is the skill I’d most like to learn, or at least have a go at. Spinning.

I don’t mean with a spinning wheel (though heck yeah!), but something far more low key.

Long, long before I learned to knit I happened to spot the Etsy shop of Snowberry Lime, and I fell in love with her clouds of unusual and beautiful hand-spun yarns. I didn’t know how to knit or crochet and so had no ‘use’ for her beautiful work, but if I had the money I would have bought some of her yarn just to display in jars.

Now I find myself looking at wooden drop spindles and fibre and wondering what it must be like to knit with something you have spun yourself. How satisfying to know that you have taken some fluff and turned it into yarn, and taken that yarn and turned it into an object to wear.

I keep looking at the wooden spindles and wondering if I could cobble something workable together from things around the house, however I don’t think I have anything heavy enough to do the trick.

How wonderful though, to take the creation of your object back one more stage. How far back could yo take the creation process? Dyeing your own fibre and yarn is another option, or you could always go back to the source and become a shepherd…

Click here to see other blogs tagged with knitcroblo4, blogging about this same topic for Knitting and Crochet Blog week. (May take a few hours to update on Google)

Behold the Harlequilt Socks, in as highly saturated a combination of colours as Kaffe Fasett ever did conceive.

I am extremely happy with how these entrelac socks have turned out, but I am glad that they are finally complete.  I did feel the project started to drag on a bit after about the fifth entrelac row of each respective sock, and actually found myself counting down until the end of the entrelac portion square by square, seeing the new task of turning the heel as a refreshing new task before sprint-knitting through the rows of stockinette to a short row toe.

This project is my first flirtation with entrelac, and thought the technique is quite engaging, the novelty of picking up stitches for each square wore off after the first sock.  Entrelac is not difficult. If you can knit, purl, decrease and pick up stitches, then you can do entrelac.  Once the foundation row of triangles have been completed, the structure is revealed and you suddenly have an epiphany over the logic of the technique, and it all falls quickly into place.  Entrelac is just stockinette stitch knitted in small blocks.  In this case, very small blocks. Entrelac isn’t time consuming because of complexities of this form of knitting, but because, when working in 6-stitch blocks such as the ones in this pattern,  you have to pick up a stitch for every twelve you knit.  You also have to turn your work every six stitches.  You spend more time turning your work than you do actually knitting, so an ability to knit backwards can be a great time-saver, though if you are like me getting the yarn set up in a position that makes backwards-knitting comfortable takes just as long again…

Despite the time-intensive knitting that I found these socks represented, I do not regret the added effort needed to complete them.  They are probably the brightest and boldest socks that I will ever make, and Craig has been asking over their progression every day or two and declared them to be ‘the best socks I have ever knit’ when I was only a third of the way into the first one.  I started each sock at the same point in the colour progression of the yarn, and I am overjoyed at how well my tension behaved during relaxing knitting sessions in front of the TV in the evenings, through discussions whilst on lunch break and whilst knitting under stress. Each rectangle corresponds perfectly with its partner on the neighbouring sock, matching from the socks of the cuff, through the heel and to the tip of each toe.

 

The yarn threw up some interesting effects, too.  Many of the stripes of this colourway change shade at a distinct and straight line, but at some colour junctions the new shade creeps in, making a wavy, patterned edge as you can see in the stockinette foot portion.  Whilst knitting the socks it started to become apparent that all of the solid colours were lining up at the front of the sock and these intermediate waves of broken colour were all pooling at the back.  What’s more, at the point where my 2×1 ribbing stopped to begin the foundation triangles, the yarn changed to a bright fuschia for the decrease round, before swiftly changing again, which give the impression of a line of little overhand stitches joining the ribbed cuff to the main body of the sock:

I didn’t like this at first, but as the lines of rectangles began to build like a patchwork quilt, with the appearance of little ’stitches’ where one colour would show through the decrease stitches that bind each tile to the next, I thought that these little chance quirks that came about because of the union of this particular yarn and this pattern were quite charming, and so suggested the name ‘Harlequilt’.

I am often reading on the forums of Ravelry crocheters bemoaning the bias in the fibre world that seemingly results in crochet being seen by some to be a lesser craft to knitting. To be honest, I haven’t noticed it that much myself, but as I have been told in reply ‘ah, but you are primarily a knitter therefore you are not sensitive to the jibes and comments’. This may be true, though in general I have seen good support of both crafts (which is not to say that I think they both receive the same amount of coverage – as far as I can tell there are more knitters than crocheters on ravelry and other such gathering places for fibre enthusiasts, so I’d assume that the greater number of patterns, etc for knitting is a direct reflection of that – but am I right in those assumptions?

As for my own feelings on the matter – I think that there is plenty of room in the fibre-crafts world for both past-times. I learned to crochet only shortly after (a couple of weeks, maybe) learning how to knit. I have definitely advanced further in my knitting than my crochet in that time. I prefer the fluid fabric of my knitting for most item, but I appreciate the rigidity of crochet can benefit the construction of many garments such as hats. The popularity of Japanese pop-culture and the amigurumi explosion also gives good support to crochet being king of the soft toy castle, but in general I prefer the smooth surface of stockinette and the manipulations of knitted lace and cables to the fabrics generated by crochet in many instances. This is not craft snobbery, and I do not look down on crochet, it is just a personal preference of aesthetics and form, and I think that must be separated away from the idea of a craft bias. An amigarumi maker may extoll the virtues of their craft in the formation of their adorably cute creations, but again this isn’t snobbery against knitted forms, just the personal preference of one way of creating a fabric for a specific function over another.

I am still confused about to what extent members of the knitting community do ‘look down’ on crochet as a craft, and how keenly this is felt by crocheters, so I have written out this short and completely anonymous survey to hopefully just break the surface of opinion. As it is completely anonymous (the clicks are registered as numbers and nothing more) you can be totally honest, so if you are a knitter that hates crochet, vent your frustration with a click. Conversely, if you are a crocheter that thinks that knitted things are soooo 2005, and hate the way crochet is treated, anonymous clicking awaits.

If you have any comments to make that aren’t covered by the survey, please feel free to leave them in the comments section, though obviously if you fill out the field with your name, then that is less anonymous – though this still cannot be linked with your poll results. I’ll close this on the 8th of February, and by then hopefully there will be enough results to make a fancy graph or two…

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The survey is now closed.  There were 704 (!) responses in total. I shall try and make a few graphs and publish the full results tomorrow, as it will take me a while to compile the information.  Thanks to all that took part

Yes, yes, you wouldn’t think it if you saw me bobbing around now, but when I was younger (much younger) I used to have ballet lessons, and I studied dance at university. ‘Entrelacé‘ was variously purred, sometimes barked (depending on if that day’s teacher was a cat or a dog – she could be both depending on what mood you caught her in) as an instruction in those classes.  My very limited GCSE French would demystify this term to the less grandiose ‘interlace’; Entre-lacé = to inter-lace, to interweave.

In a roundabout way, this brings us to my new adventure in knitting techniques – entrelac – an interweaving pattern of slanted knitted sections that give the appearance of basketwork on the diagonal.  An almost 3D effect of puffed up quilted diamonds.

Of course, if you are going to swathe any part of your anatomy in a patchwork of diamond motifs, why not take inspiration from the jesters of old and turn yourself into a member of the commedia dell’arte and make like a harlequin?  And who’s going to better provide you with that riot of colour but Lord 37 Colours Is Never Enough, Kaffe Fasset.

So, armed with what is not exactly the subtlest of yarns I embarked upon my crusade to make the world most caustic-looking socks.  A pair of  ’oh, no mummy, make that lady’s jeans a bit longest, the slight raising of the hem as she walks – it burns my eyes!‘ pair of foot coverings.  The shade above is aptly named ‘zany’ and the resulting socks will hopefully not disappoint in reflecting that moniker:

As diamond after diamond slowly climb in tiers towards the next adventure of ‘my first heel flap’ I have to admit that I am looking forward to the stockinette foot portion, which I am sure will zoom by and set me with a bit of respite, ready for another slowly progressing interweaving of diamonds and a second harlequin’s sock.
The Annetrelac sock pattern is available to purchase from interweave knits