knitting kitchen

I bought a couple of skeins of cormo from Martha’s Vineyard Fiber Farm. Despite the 4 tons of yarn I have in my stash, I feel very careful of these skeins. The first one became a cowl. The second skein, also worsted weight, was swatched for a hat.  I will still design the hat, but I couldn’t quite get there with this skein.  I think it is the color. It is a bright yellow-orange and the yarn kept pushing me to make it into something else.  I sometimes do what I’m told and after the 4th unravel, I stuffed it into a bag.

Out came the precious skein of sock yarn.  With the gauge being different, I decided toe-up was the most prudent choice.   All of these yarns have amazing stitch definition despite the softness. Whatever I design for them, it seems to be all about the texture.  It doesn’t help that I do not have easy access to other skeins in other colors.  I am also unwilling to mix this yarn with another kind of yarn.

I struggled with The Sock. Finally, sock #1 ended up with an argyle pattern in texture and I’m in the home stretch with that pattern. But I hate the toe.  I’ve ripped this sock back so many times that I just couldn’t rip it out once more.  I’m not usually like this, but after working 10 hour days, knitting time is at a premium. After a week of knitting and still not having one finished sock, I just didn’t have it in me to start all over again.  I weighed the entire conglomeration on the gram scale and then pulled out of the ball enough yarn so that 3/4 of finished sock + some yarn = 1/2 the entire skein.  Then I cut the yarn.  With the remaining 1/2 skein, I was free to knit my next toe-up while leaving the 3/4 finished sock without a knot in its future.

Last count, I’d knitted 6 toes. Exhausted at the end of the work week, I decided I was pushing myself too hard to make this sock happen and I went back to lick my knitting wounds by working on the second Seaweed Sock. 

Sometimes you have to admit defeat in order to have inspiration find you.

Earlier in the week, I pulled out Anna Zilboorg’s Fancy Feet. When I read the technique for the Turkish cast on of these toe-up socks, I recalled the Zilboorg mittens I’d made earlier in the year.  Admittedly, the Turkish socks is where Ms. Zilboorg found the inspiration for her Magnificent Mittens.  The woman is a genius.

This scrap of knitting arcana and the ball of yellow cormo collided in my mind. Top-down mittens! Do I add texture? Easily, but I was concerned that single-colored mittens would be too thin and not very warm. Then it hit me, Mr. MVFF Cormo was about to become a top-down thrummed mitten!.

Or a Muppet wig.

Today, M and I are going to Astoria to visit Jessye. There may also be a fountain pen store in our future.

Caution: gratuitous baseball content

Jessye and I have often remarked how we wish there were real women baseball commentators. While I love Gary, Keith, and Ron (definitely not in that order), it would also be nice to hear real women’s observations of the game. I’m not talking about hearing the chatter of those overly beautiful, 6′ tall blonde women who do the post-game one-on-one. I heard that two women wrote a book about women watching baseball. They’ll be at Shea this evening, with Jerry’s wife, to discuss women watching baseball. We’ll be there and it’s not wasted on my that after much disappointment, the Mets are in first place in the NL East.  It’s a great way to go if this is the last game I ever see at Shea.