Eskimimi Knits knitting blog

Eskimimi Knits is website of the month in the July 2010 issue of Let's Knit

A thread was started on The Blog Hub group on Ravelry yesterday, congratulating me on Eskimimi Knits being the Website of the Month in the July 2010 issue of Let’s Knit.  It was news to me (good news, of course) as I had absolutely no idea.  I did wonder if the poster was perhaps mistaken, but no, there it is along with an accompanying picture.

What a lovely thing to find out about so unexpectedly.  If you happen to have popped by this site after reading about it in the magazine, please may I welcome you to my little website.  If you have any questions just leave a comment or use the little contact Eskimimi web form and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

In other news the recently frogged socks have started to re-form into something far simpler and far more satisfying.

Knitting up at the speed of light these socks contain many of my favourite elements.  A good, hard-wearing yarn (the old faithful Kaffe Fassett Design line for Regia in this case), a super-stretchy turned cuff and and all-in-one heelflap/gusset construction.  Oh, and stripes. Big, bold blocks of manly hue, just perfect for a pair of socks for Craig.

densely knit stockinette socks - a simple, pleasurable knit.

The last time I posted pictures of my sock knitting a couple of readers asked why I knit two socks at a time on DPNs, rather than magic looping two socks on one needle, or on two long circulars.  Firstly I would say that I love knitting socks on DPNs.  I know that they send some knitters up the wall, but I love the small portability and the lack of any extra needle cord getting in my way.  I think magic-looping has revolutionised small-diameter knitting for many knitters, but I just find that the repositioning of the extra length of cord interrupts my flow of knitting too much.  The same is true of working on two circulars, which whilst my go-to method for closing the top of a hat when I don’t have the appropriate DPNs, still sees me juggling with four clattering needle tips and lengths of plastic cord.  When I knit on DPNs my knitting flows from one needle to the next in an almost seamless transition so that I can forget about the position of the needles and just enjoy the rhythm and progression of my knitting.

I don’t usually knit both socks at once, though, and certainly wouldn’t have bought two sets of DPNs purely for this reason, but I happened to have an unfortunate incident a while back when my sock needle set and I became separated by 300 miles.  I didn’t realise that the separation was to be temporary at the time, though, and feared my needles lost.  After a brief mourning period I bought myself a new, identical set, proving you can sometimes replace your best friend.

So, after a grand reunion, I have two identical sets of needles.  I can, if I wish, knit both socks at once.  I wouldn’t normally do so, but I have reached the point in my sock knitting where I feel confident enough to play with the numbers a little, to customise the fit of the heel and the numbers used in various other parts of the sock construction.  I could of course knit one sock, note down my adjustments and then use my notes to knit the second sock, but knitting them both at the same time negates the need to do this and stops me from the temptation to be lazy and rely on my (faulty) powers of recollection.  Any changes I make on one sock can be instantly replicated on the second so (hopefully) will result in a pair of socks identically knit.

Harlequilt Socks

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.

Yarn is Regia Kaffe Fassett Design Line Crazy Colour in 'Zany'

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…

Finished and matching. I think the effort was worth it.

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:

yarn and pattern coming together to produce a stitched effect

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’.