pepperknit

The final Amazing Lace challenge is to find an unlikely model. I didn’t participate in the last challenge, due more to forgetfulness than anything else, and I have been racking my brain to think of a good unlikely lace model. I thought about statues, colonial people (though I didn’t see any the day I went looking), etc. Eventually, I went with this:

This is unlikely for two reasons, not least of which is that cars do not wear socks. The other reason is that cars do not factor into my life much. That is, it’s unlikely that I have a car to hang my socks on! But I went out and rented a car, just for this photo.

OK, not really; I was headed to a family picnic in north Jersey. But it is the last thing I would have thought to put my socks on! They hung out inside, too:

I’d, uh, well, actually, um, I’d have a pair of socks. Anastasia Socks, that is.

When the Amazing Lace administrators posted asking us to come up with what our projects would be if cast off right then, the only thing I had left to do with these socks was decide on a cast-off.

So I did, and used the oft-recommended Elizabeth Zimmerman sewn cast-off. Conveniently, Knitty just came out with directions, so you can easily find directions to do it yourself. I had never used it before, but I’m convinced: It, quite simply, rocks. Stretchy, easy, looks good—awesome.

These socks, as I’ve said, are intended as a Christmas present for the boy’s eldest sister, whose middle name is Anastasia. But I’m also a huge Anastasia Krupnik fan, so they’re also an homage to that brilliant children’s series of books. The socks are also my first completed pair for the official Summer of Socks (though for my personal summer of socks they’re pair #3).

The pattern for these bad boys is available via an emailed pdf. E-mail me (mintyfreshflavor AT gmail), and I’ll send it to you! (It’s ready!) Specify the pattern name (or describe the socks) so I don’t send you the Zokni pattern by mistake!

Some additional down ‘n’ dirty details:
Yarn: Koigu KPPM
Skeins: 2
Needles: 2.5 mm Addi Turbos
Started: Wednesday, June 21
Finished: Wednesday, July 5 (? I think. I can’t remember at all. It was last week.)
Basic details: Toe-up socks using a short-row heel. I mirrored the pattern so that the two coordinated but weren’t exact matches.

I’d hoped to cast all of my Amazing Lace posts as Amazing Race posts, as I’ve done before, but I’m sorry, I just lost some steam and it didn’t make much sense with either this challenge or the poetry one (which, you’ll notice, I opted out of!). So in the end I couldn’t keep it up the whole time, which is too bad because they were fun to write.

A detour is a choice between two tasks, each with its own pros and cons. In this Detour, teams must decide between two grueling choices: Frog It, or Knit It?

In Frog It, teams will take out the single sock (Minty-titled “Anastasia sock”)* they’ve completed.

From here, teams will start over, using the same essential stitch pattern (Digaonal Faggoting Stripes) but reducing the number of stitches around and finessing the cuff a bit more. Teams will have to decide whether to keep the detail of the pattern extending into the toe area or not. This decision could be anguishing, because it means about 3 days of work gone, but in the end it could lead to a more satisfied recipient, and team.

In Knit It, teams say “screw it” and start on the second sock, mirroring the pattern in the first sock and not worrying at it too much.

Which do YOU think Minty will choose?

“Sigh. The perfectionist in me needs to frog this. I hate the idea of it, but I wouldn’t feel right giving these as a gift. The boy says that my obsessing over this one sock is reaching masochistic levels; I’ve taken it out twice before but had never gotten this far. But it’s just not sitting well. Something ain’t right with this sock, and it’s going to need some work.”

“If it doesn’t feel right, you shouldn’t force it. There really are issues with these socks. 1) The stitch pattern doesn’t really show up unless the socks are stretched more. You did a good job figuring out your gauge and matching it to the recipient’s size (8, not Minty’s shoe size actually), and it fits nicely, but you really do need to make it smaller to show it off in its best light. That’s hard to assess, considering you wear a 7.5, so the sock should feel just a wee bit big anyway. 2) The extension of the pattern into the toe is a sweet little detail, but it may lead to more wear, with toes catching on the holes, etc. It might be more impractical than necessary. 3) And the k1p1 rib, well, to be honest, kind of looks like ass. 4) I won’t even point out the craptastic castoff you did. Bottom line: You can do better.”

“I guess the answer is clear. I’ll start over with the other ball of yarn, though, because that way I can do a side-by-side comparison and decide which really is better. I’m still happy with the stitch I chose, and I think it’s a good one for vareigated yarn, because it has fairly wide expanses of stockinette. I hate when lace gets lost in the vareigations. Plus, it’s not really such a heartbreak to have more time to knit with this Koigu, which really feels so lovely.”

*Definitely inspired by the Mata Hari socks, with their spiral of eyelets, but still a Minty creation, such as they are, going toe-up, using a short-row toe and short-row heel. I like the continuous double line of holes, plus the texture that the k2togs creates.

Minty and her teammate, who arrived at the Pit Stop last Saturday, are now ready to leave. Teams will head into the most extreme of locales, to perform the most extreme feats. Teams are given $2 in quarters. (”Count the money!”)

Minty knows what’s coming as she rounds the corner. “Oh my god. No, it’s not . . . You’re kidding me! They can’t be serious.”

Oh yes. Amazing Lace goes to Xtremes.

On Saturday, Minty and her teammate rounded the corner and approached the mat, where Phil was standing by along with a local (Ben Franklin? Some other colonial person?) waiting to welcome them in.

Welcome to the first Pit Stop.

“Phil! I can’t believe how quickly this leg of the race went. It’s all thanks to Minty’s single-mindedness. She just would not put these socks down!”

“It was so fun to work on them; my teammate really came through. I love the color, and though the yarn didn’t feel all that luscious on my finger as I was knitting, the end result is really quite nice.”

“Minty, do you want to tell us a little about this leg of the Lace?”

“Of course! Here are the details:

Elm Leaf Socks (Zokni Socks)
Pattern: My own down-and-dirty pattern, involving picking a stitch pattern, writing it out as a chart, and doing a short-row heel and simple decreased toe. I will try to write it up for anyone who’s interested in the next few days. Anyone know how to post a pdf to a blogger blog? Is it possible?
Yarn: Knit Picks’s Essential sock yarn in green
Needles: Addi Turbo US 1s
Method: Magic Loop
Size: Women’s 5 1/2
Gift for: My oldest friend, who recently expressed a desire for a pair of knitted socks. They aren’t technically a surprise, though she hasn’t seen the pattern. I did call her in the middle of the first sock to get her to measure her foot. When compared with the measurements given in Sensational Knitted Socks, she was a dead-on 5 1/2. The question is whether I executed that correctly.
Started: Saturday, June 3
Finished: Saturday, June 10
Notes: I had a lot of fun working up this pattern, from figuring out the chart to actually executing it. Funnily enough, despite my familiarity with the pattern, I never got to the point where I could read my knitting—I could never remember if the yo was before or after the k1 toward the “stem” on rows 1 and 7. Once I’d done one repeat, I could do the others, but for every row, I had to glance at the pattern. Here’s the pattern slightly opened up (on my hand; not the best representation):

Randomly, I should add that kitchenering was a breeze. I have always been able to execute a kitchener stitch effectively, but I approached the process with trepidation. This time I just did it, and it went smoothly, so I think I’m no longer intimidated by kitchener. And there was no second sock syndrome!

Now I just have to fret until June 30, when my friend comes to visit, to find out if they fit okay!”

Stay tuned to find out how Minty will “eat, sleep, and mingle with the other teams” while on this Pit Stop–and to see how the next leg of the race goes!

A Roadblock is a task that only one team member may perform. In this Roadblock, that team member must scout the city of Philadelphia to find new sock yarn. Minty took this challenge for her team on Friday, hoping for the best with all the walking even after hurting her back at yoga in the morning. See the route she took here.

The search begins at Sophie’s Yarns, where all yarn searches begin. (Minty lives nearby.) They never end here, however, as the selection is slim and sock yarn in short supply. The owner is incredibly nice and friendly, always interested in what you’re working on (or leaves you perfectly well alone if you want), and she also seems to have a commitment to learning about the business practices of all the yarn companies she carries, opting to keep those with good ethics and not reorder from those whose practices are questionable. All laudable qualities. But the selection simply isn’t there. Two aggressively friendly store cats are pleasant, but for those with allergies (Minty is very allergic to cats), it’s not always welcome. Minty stopped in but was on her way soon thereafter.

From here, it was a trek west, to get to Loop. Minty went a little out of her way by walking down Lombard, mostly because there’s a lot of construction going on on South Street, but also because Lombard is nicer than South.

Minty can’t think of a single negative thing to say about Loop. The space is perfect. Lots of yarn, lots of selection, a crisp, clean, white interior with friendly and hands-off staff who also are engaging to chat with. Minty dropped her credit card on the counter and walked off with five skeins of yarn, all sock yarn (not all destined to be lace socks, however). Her love for this store doesn’t wane with repeated visits, and she would like to start going there to knit but finds that whole thing intimidating and it’s a lot farther away than the couch in the living room. She was making incredible progress on this Roadblock, but still had one more yarn shop to go, Rosie’s Yarn Cellar, just a few blocks north of Loop.

Rosie’s has a very good selection for its incredibly small size, but it always feels a bit dingy to Minty. She noticed that they now have hardwood floors, which was nice to see—Minty rarely goes to Rosie’s, and the last time she was there the floors were carpet. The sock yarn selection didn’t feel as extensive as at Loop, though interestingly the Koigu was $1 cheaper at Rosie’s ($11 rather than $12). Minty regretted spending the extra $2 but ultimately enjoyed the experience at Loop so much more, it was OK. Minty left with only a backissue of Interweave Knits—the winter one with Embossed Leaves in it. She’d searched though the other yarn stores, even Vagabond (a delightful boutique that sells nice yarns and some notions in addition to fabulous clothing—Minty bought the bridesmaid dress she wore two weeks ago there) and not been able to find that one. Old IKs were plentiful around the city, but not that issue. Note that Rosie’s did not discount the backissue, which Sophie’s does. The one woman working at Rosie’s was uninterested in chatting, despite Minty’s mild attempt. The environment didn’t feel particularly welcoming.

Minty raced back home, this time in a cab, because the sky opened up and rain came tumbling out of the sky. Her back was feeling fine, thankfully! She produced her skeins . . .

. . . and was handed the next clue:

Finish knitting your first pair of socks, and proceed to the first Pit Stop!

Yesterday was Worldwide Knit in Public Day, as many of you know. I’m not friends with any knitters in Philly, so I innocently suggested a picnic for me, the boy, and a friend. They humored me, and besides, who would turn down a picnic on a day like yesterday? Despite the wind, it was beautiful.

So at 1pm, after yoga, we picked up the boy and walked over to Whole Foods, where we loaded up on sandwiches, salads, and absolutely perfect berries (straw- and black-). We made our way to the western side of the city, plopped down on the eastern side of Rittenhouse Square, and dug in. I was feeling sheepish and didn’t want to pull out my knitting until I saw someone else working on a project. Then I found one!

So I joined in.

I knit for a while on the second sock of my Amazing Lace socks, while my friends made fun of me. Eventually they were too tired to continue the ridicule, and normal conversation resumed. By then I was tired, too, so we all left to get some coffee.

In all, I didn’t knit for very long, and I kind of wish I’d walked around, looking for knitters, but I’m still happy I did what little I did. I will say that I wish I’d been sitting on a bench—it’s not comfortable to knit while sitting cross-legged on the ground. Maybe there’s a reason I mostly knit while sitting on the couch!

Before the break, Minty was having something of a nervous breakdown over charting out her lace. Having chosen “Chart It” as her detour, she was attempting to rewrite a lace pattern—
Traveling Vine Lace—into a chart from a row-by-row, nonrepeating pattern. Her boyfriend even stopped her to take her out for water ice and frozen custard (Rita’s “gelati” mmmm) to try to calm her nerves. Finally, she got it down on paper and just set to work.

Then she discovered a bit of a quirk to the pattern, which is probably why she’d had so much trouble making sense of it all along. Because the last stitches of the final few rows are k2togs, the pattern was shifting. This required rejiggering the chart. It eventually looked like this.

This led to having to rotate 6 stitches around the needles at the end of every 12-row repeat. Not impossible, but not very tidy. The Pomatomus socks have to be shifted by one stitch after every 22-row repeat, which seems reasonable. Six? A little much.

Undeterred, and knowing the Detour wouldn’t be complete unless she had a good working pattern, she tried to rewrite the chart so that the decreases stayed centered in the panel of repeats. Knitting as she went, everything was going fine until the last row.

Foley artists have helpfully supplied the sound of brakes squealing, and maybe a violent crash.

“Argh; that last stitch needs to be knit together with the stitch that’s on the other needle, from the row before! I can’t write a pattern in which you have to move stitches around in the middle of a repeat! That’s stupid, and not going to be practical in the long run. But wait, let’s just look at the sock so far. I’ve done 3 full pattern repeats. And you know what? I don’t even like the pattern anymore. It’s too narrow, too blumpy, doesn’t feel lacy enough. Hate!”

“[Sigh.] Then why not just pick a new lace? Now that you’re a charting pro, it won’t be a problem. You can do this, Minty. I believe in you. You’re doing so good!”

And now the team is well on its way; 6 repeats of this pattern later, Minty is now doing a short-row heel. Stay tuned for the next potential Roadblock: the second sock.

Apologies for the lack of photographs; my boyfriend is away for the weekend and he took the camera! The bastard, trying to document a weekend away with his friends.

A Detour is a choice between two tasks, each with its own pros and cons. In this Detour, teams have a choice between two methods common to knitters: Chart It or Read It.

In Chart It, teams will take a pattern out of Barbara Walker’s Treasury of Knitting Patterns, which is written in a row-by-row, spelled-out manner, and convert it into a chart. The pattern as it’s written does not account for being worked in the round, and teams must write the chart so that it can be read this way. The task is challenging but ultimately rewarding, though it could take a long time.

In Read It, teams will take the same pattern out of Barbara Walker’s Treasury of Knitting Patterns, do a swatch to familiarize themselves with the pattern, and simply use the printed pattern as a guide. The task is not as rewarding, could still take some time, but may be slightly less challenging.

“I think we should just Read It. It’s too complicated to write up a chart like this, especially since it’s not obvious where those extra 4 stitches the pattern requires (’multiple of 8 plus 4′) are.”

“No, I think we should Chart It. Charts are so pretty, so straightforward, and if I wanted to write the pattern up for this sock later, it would be really useful. I’ll just keep drawing out the pattern until I can figure out how to place each stitch correctly.”

“Alright Minty, if that’s what you want. But even though you’ve read the Knitty tutorial on charting and Eunny’s Majoring in Lace series, I’m not sure you are familiar enough with charts to make this work. Plus those resources don’t really give step-by-step directions for how to write out a complex pattern. You might need to go look at some actual books on lace.”

“I’ll make it work. I’m spatially oriented! I adore graph paper! I can do this. I’ll just do it—why stop to gather more resources? It’s important for me to learn, anyway. Isn’t part of this Lace about me growing as a knitter?”

The team sits down with graph paper, pencil, eraser, and the pattern book.

Multiple attempts . . . different techniques . . . getting no closer.

“Oh my god! The stitch count changes on every row. No wonder I can’t make it all line up right! I have no idea what I’m doing. I know there’s a ‘no stitch’ often used in lace charts, but how do I know where to place it? Where’s the ‘extra’ stitch? I can’t do this. Sock yarn, there’s no way I can do this! It just makes no sense! I’ve tried. I’ve tried! Nothing lines up. And when I go to knit it, I can see where the stitches go, but I can’t seem to find them on the chart. (Really: I can ‘read’ the knitting itself but can’t make it into a readable chart for some reason.) My brain is going to explode!”

Go to slow-mo to heighten the drama before cutting to commercial. Will Minty pull out what remains of her hair? Will she manage to figure out this stupid detour? She’s going to have to break for some extensive research. Hopefully, in true Amazing Race style, when we come back from the commercial break we’ll discover that all the drama was an editor’s manipulation: Of course she was going to figure it out. (”Um, I’m not so sure!”—Minty)

Welcome to this first episode of a race through several lace socks, here on The Amazing Lace.

“Hi, I’m Mintyfresh. I’m from Philadelphia, PA. (I also just got my hair cut today and yoiks it’s shorter than I wanted, and I’m freaking out.)”

“Hi! I’m some sock yarn. I’m originally from Italy, actually. Please tell Minty that her hair looks just fine.”

“So yeah, we’re doing the Amazing Lace. This is going to be the adventure of a lifetime.”

“We haven’t really been together for very long, you know, so this will be a real test to see where our relationship is going to go.”

“I think that our relationship is just going to get stronger and stronger as the Lace progresses; we are allies in this. By the end of the Amazing Lace, we may have 3 or 4 pairs of lace socks*!”

“One of our weaknesses is, I think, that Minty doesn’t really know what the hell she’s doing. I mean, she’s decided to apply lace patterns she likes (from the Barbara Walker Treasuries 1 and 2) to making socks (based on the useful Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch), but one of her big problems is the tendency to overanalyze. She’s going to be knitting me up and ripping me out repeatedly this summer, I fear.”

“You’re right, sock yarn, you’re right! I’m going to work really hard on this part of myself. I think that not only will this Lace teach me a lot about working with lace, and socks, but it will teach me a lot about myself. I need to just go with the flow, commit to one idea, and see it through. But there are so many different laces that call out to me.”

“I think that other teams are going to underestimate us, because we don’t have a really long history with each other.”

“It’s true; I’ve only ever been with one other pair of lace socks before. Not only is this a test of my ability to successfully do lace, it’s a test of my ability to overcome Second Sock Syndrome.”

“You’d better not have SSS! I was designed to be a pair of socks.”

“Sock yarn’s right. In the end, it will be just me and the socks standing at the finish line. That’s all that really matters.**”

*using different sock yarns, of course; not just Essential. We’re on a bit of a relay here.
**gibberishy overstatements and hyperbole courtesy every contestant of The Amazing Race, ever.