Knitting during a pandemic

I don't want to labour a discussion of the times. We have had a pretty easy time of it here in Nova Scotia and let's hope it stays that way.

However this affects everyone and we are all staying close to home more than usual and there is a sort of anxiety running in the background. I now only check the news once a day and told my husband that if he is going to listen to things more often than that would he please put on headphones - some voices I don't need to hear in this house.

I am trying not to add to anyone's angst myself and to focus on things that are more enduring than this moment in time. Nature, children, dogs, cooking, ordering fabric.

And I have returned to knitting in the evenings.

Now I am a garment sewist through and through and I put a lot of effort into my sewing. I am particularly interested in construction details and techniques.

To me knitting is about none of that. I realize how innovative and technical knitting has become but that's not why I knit. I knit like a sort of repetitive meditation. Round and round without a lot of thinking. Like those Buddhist monks in Japan who spent their lifetimes raking gravel into patterns as sort of a religious practice. When I first talked to someone who had gone on a Buddhist retreat and did just this for a couple of months I have to tell you it didn't make a lot of sense to me. My cultural background is big on the useful activity and sitting down or any activity without a meaningful output was just not on the books.

However these days when there is too much incoming to handle all at once the idea of stopping a raking the gravel, or knitting the same stitches for hours if not days at a time, is starting to make sense to me. It's like you jump off the train for a bit onto the platform to catch your breath and let a few of those trains just pass you by.

So committed to non-demanding knitting in my evenings has meant some basic circular knitting with easy patterns. I just don't need to be doing anything right now that requires me to stop and watch a YouTube video to figure it out. 

You get what I mean?

Any of you learning a new language at the moment?

See what I mean.

As a result I have been knitting a lot of socks and a few sweaters. The first of these, appropriately, was the "Homebody" pattern by Heidi Kirrmaier. I had some Eco wool in a bin and knit this up for my daughter. I left it at her house and she sent me back this picture with the message "It fits perfectly."

The fit around the shoulders and neckline in particular is outstanding and due to the placement of the raglan lines. Since this is a seamless top down pattern (I love hand sewing but completely hate sewing sweater pieces together) it is hard to get a nice fit without a lot of shaping but I think this one does it. I think I will knit myself one too once I have figured out a decent online yarn source. I know where to order fabric but not yarn and I am not feeling like hitting the stores at the moment.

As far as patterns go it was pretty cryptic. Heidi is an excellent designer but has a technical professional background and her instructions were very efficient but all charts and numbers. Being numerically challenged, and highly text based,  in a few places I wrote the instructions out in words to I would stay on track, but you wouldn't probably need to do that. I intend to knit more of Heidi's patterns and maybe won't even need to do that myself again now I have a better understanding of the logic of her patterns.

The second sweater I knit was for myself from Ann Budd's really interesting Book of Sweater Patterns. This is a great resource for folks like me who only want to knit something simple and hate fooling around with gauge. Basically you knit a swatch first with a needle size and yarn you like, measure the number of stitches per inch and then match the gauge you already have to the numbers you need to cast on etc. according to the size you want.

Did I explain that correctly?

Anyway it's a pretty relaxed approach to low key sweater knitting and that suits me just fine at the moment. Here I am in a basic dropped shoulder, knit in the round with no seams to sew, V neck. I am wearing my favourite poplin antique pull on shorts and some pretty weird glasses.

The moral of the story with the glasses is if you go into the optometrist's and announce "I need something bright and cheerful" and you only try on the glasses with a mask on over your whole face when you go back to pick up these glasses they might be pretty bright turquoise. The six-year-old thought they were outstanding, my daughter, his mother thought they would be just fine for wearing around the house. 

There is of course a real possibility too that at this stage of the game I worry more about cheerful than looking like a maniac.

Now tell me what you are doing? What are your own current self soothing activities? Any of you knitting too? Reviving lost activities? (I have also considered hauling out some 30 year old cross stitch patterns).

How are you mediating? How do you manage to actually do that? What is your mediation equivalent?

Seems to me ideas on this are worth sharing.

Santa's workshop: update from the sock department

OK here are the latest.


The first is a pair for my wonderful son-in-law who wears heavy socks around the house in his Birks.
I used this really great yarn I have found only at the Yarn Haven in Knoxville although I am sure it exists elsewhere, although the people can't be any nicer. 75% wool 25% nylon perfect for heavy socks.

These are really quick socks and the colours are great. Note you purists that I make no attempt to make the patterns on each sock match, not the week before Christmas.


I also finished this pair in finer yarn for my middle son's girlfriend. I am hoping socks hit the right enough but not too much note.

I followed all the advice of the sock experts and kept my needle size small (2.5 mm) and the gauge tight  but to be honest I think these are fairly rigid and if her feet are bigger than mine we are sunk. I have sent a high priority email off to my son for confidential information on his girlfriend's foot size but I haven't heard back - can't imagine why at 8:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning in NYC where he is celebrating Christmas with her before they go separate family ways for the holidays, he isn't getting right back to the Workshop with such essential information.


If I have to make another pair before he takes this present back to DC for New Year's I can do it, besides I have a sister with small feet who likes purple.


And I am going up a needle size.

Lucky socks

Once in a sewing class I took, a woman shared a post-Christmas story about cleaning up after her grown-up sons had gone home.

She always found the present she made them left behind.

This story was like a stab to my heart and to every mother and sewer who has wondered if the gift you made yourself was really what they wanted. I know I felt like that the year I made everyone a quillo.

Male relatives, sons, husbands, brother-in-laws, fathers, nephews and the rest of them can be just so difficult to buy gifts for. The trouble with most men is that despite the fact that they can be the plainest, or worst dressers, on the planet they are highly particular about how they do this, not to mention they usually like to buy exactly what they want for themselves.

Upgrading and treating are not things they understand or appreciate. A man my husband works with confessed that his wife had given him a pedicure for their anniversary (these guys work outside on an environmental engineering project) and I don't want to know the back story there. You would think she had suggested a sex change. And last Christmas I gave my spouse silk PJ bottoms (I thought because he likes silk on me he would like it on him) and he gave them back to me last month, unworn, because they make him nervous.

Woman are so much easier. Most woman have a huge list of things they would like to buy for themselves if they could and basically feel totally comfortable with whatever luxury they can get their hands on.

Which brings me to socks.

So far I have not knit myself socks but have been knitting them for the men around here. Husband, son, son-in-law, nephew. They actually like them, no they love them. All men wear socks, everyday most days, and apparently hand knit socks are comfortable. They actually prefer my socks. I have orders for more.

How about that?

Even my surfer youngest son who is usually totally indifferent to things material wore his, for three days straight actually until I caught him at it. He said they were his "lucky socks."

Pictured here is my 13 year old son, Nick, Nancy's son, in his lucky socks.

I actually think the lucky one is me.

On learning new things

I am writing this from northern Florida where we arrived yesterday. We will be here for two weeks and then off to Tennessee for a month while DH goes back to work.

Packing my projects up for six weeks to myself was quite an ordeal. Just deciding what to take with me was a huge crisis. I decided that after a whole winter of working too hard I had to be careful not to just fill the car with unfinished should-do projects (those wool work skirts stayed home). So in the end I decided to bring all my blouse fabric and patterns to perfect fit, three summer dresses that are cut, fused and serged, my DC son's shirt pattern and fabric, all my bra making supplies,  the bolt of fabric he had waiting for me in DC for curtains, and patterns to trace. I also packed all my sock yarn and my Getting started with socks book. Oh yes and a roll of tracing paper.

In the end my husband had to go out and buy a car top carrier to get it all here, and of course I might pick up the odd yard or two while I am down here.

And I am finally going to have time to blog.

So here is the progress to date.

Socks: 

We agree that my gauge was too loose in my first pair. 

The Dr. Seuss socks.

DH has kindly summed it up this way  "They are great socks, they feel like they are going to fall down all the time but they don't, amazing." So I went down a full mm. size in my needles next time and made one sock (cast on New Jersey turnpike, grafted the toe in Baltimore) that I had intended for one niece with size 9 feet but now

 are going

to go to her 10 year old cousin. These are some pretty firm little socks, pictured here in Kroy stripe sock wool, unblocked. I should be working my way through sock two except I sat on my nice little eco bamboo needles (the same time I put my knee in my sandwich checking on Mr. Rascal who we think hurt his shoulder chasing a ball at the side of the road in New Brunswick) and they now look like those mangled satay sticks you scrape off plates after a BBQ. Promise to pick up some more and at least finish this pair, and to buy steel needles.

I have also been experimenting (if you can call knitting three socks only in an entire lifetime experimenting) with the cuffs. Because I have a horror of knitting Dr. Seuss socks, even though that is exactly what I have done in 2 out of the three, I am reluctant to do a stockinette stitch leg part. I would like to build in rib to hold these things up. So the first pair had k2 p2 legs, but I think those look a bit lumberjackey, and the tighty tiny pair had regular k1 p1 rib, but that took forever so in the pair I have started now in this nice Opal sock yarn I am following Ann Budd's advice (it seems I am no better at reading instructions as a knitter than I am as a sewer - BTW that checking your gauge/tension thing is pretty good advice - I realize that this is the knitting equivalent of pre-treating your fabric ) and am doing a k 3 p1 

which looks stockingnette but has rib spring.

Also thanks to Claire for putting me on to good advice about not getting those gusset holes. I have followed this up and Youtubed my way through some more tips.

I have hope about this next pair. I have hope.

Here in Tennessee

Here I am now just out of Knoxville Tennessee in the first leg of my US spring break trip visiting DH who has been here working on a project since December. We are not quite sure when his company will be sending him back to Canada so we decided I should get down here to check out a part of the continent that is pretty far from Nova Scotia. 

I love it here and we have been having a great time. DH being the prince that he is has been doing what I want to do and that included a trip to the Yarn Haven in Knoxville. This place is fantastic.

Since I can't stand to not do anything with my hands, even when I travel, I decided that it was time I learned to knit socks. This seems like a logical step for someone who has mastered dishcloths. The nice lady in the Yarn Haven hooked me up with a nice pattern and some tiny circular needles (which I love) and off I went (plus a ton of other accessories etc. which I explained to my prince were really very astute investments). I can't believe that having already crammed my little house to the roof with fabric and I am now going to start on yarn.

Oh well I need something to fit into the corners.