Still Sock with Beagle Nose

This is an Art Sock. Cable upon cable swirl down the leg and foot from a twisted-rib cuff to describe Oregon's Cascades.

a volcanic mountain range, extending from central Oregon into British Columbia. The peaks of Mt. Hood. Mt. Rainer, and Mt. Saint Helens are visible from the city of Portland, creating a picturesque horizon throughout the year. The Cascade Locks, located outside Mt. Hood, are a series of waterfalls and canals that were built during the 1870s to make the Columbia more navigable. - Knit Purl Sock Club blurb

The pattern is Cascade Locks by Sarah Worthington. The back differs from the front and, front or back, there's a lot going on here. (Click on any photo to make larger.) The front has water flowing over and under and around cables. On the back of the sock, the water flows wider and more orderly.

Sure, a person can buy socks at Target but not these socks.

More Yarn! More, More, More!

Tom looked thoughtfully at his socks the other day and said, “You should get some more bamboo sock yarn. I like it the best.”

I can see why. Bamboo keeps your feet comfy year round. So, buy more yarn? Oh-kay, I can manage that.

Off I went to my favorite internet shops. I placed orders with two of them but
The Loopy Ewe wins the customer service prize, hands down. My order arrived only three days after I placed it! The owner included a handwritten thank-you for the order and a little gift of a mini-sock pattern with enough red yarn to make it up.


This one is 400 yards of 55% bamboo, 24% cotton, and 21% elastic. The Spice colorway is autumnal and happy. Doesn't it make you want to cast on right away?


Each one of these contains 328 yards. I'm thinking of something cabled, which would eat up yardage, hence the two skeins. The composition is 75% bamboo, 25% nylon.


This brand was what I used in the socks Tom referred to when he said he preferred bamboo. It's 45% bamboo (bambus auf deutsch, 40% superwash wool, and 15% polyamid, 200 meters per skein.

Shawl Fashion Show

Nina and Tina's youtube about how to wear shawls without looking like your grandma has inspired me to drag out my own shawls.


At 52, it's getting easier by the day for me to look like an old lady and, although my height of 5'1" has its advantages (no legroom on a plane? no problem!), looking as good as Nina in a shawl is problematic, unless ...

Here, let me show you. I'll start with big, then go to medium, and end with the smallest shawls. Enter my dressmaking form. It's my measurements and my height.

My largest shawl is the triangular Vernal Equinox. It's knit from handspun alpaca laceweight, soft and light as a cloud. Still, it's a whole lotta lace. Trying it Nina's fabulous way...

And this is how I had better plan to actually wear it if I don't want to look like a pigeon wearing some kind of bizarre boob sling.

I have two medium-sized rectangular stoles, both knit in worsted weight and both from Cheryl Oberle's book, Folk Shawls. Unsurprisingly, both look best if worn the same way. This is the Russian-style Domovoi

and this is the Scottish-inspired North Sea...

For the two smaller shawls I've made for myself, I can use Nina's bib styling. The Phoenix Rising is Claudia's Handpaints Silk Lace and is beaded. It is considerably abbreviated from the original design, only because I wanted to be done with it. Here's a really clear picture of my Phoenix Rising, followed by the more modern-looking bib styling of it.



I love the difference! And here's Ishbel, knit in Malabrigo sock yarn. This one is actually designed to be worn as a bib. It works under my raincoat.

Watching Nina and Tina's youtube, then playing around with my own shawls on my sewing mannequin has shown me that smaller is better, if I'm making a shawl for myself.

Take 2

Most patterns I knit once. There are a very few so useful or fun that I knit them twice or more.


Bird in Hand Mittens top the list of patterns I've knitted more than once. Vines, flowers, and leaves twine in and around and a little bird sits on the right thumb - you can just see his yellow beak in this photo. This go-round, they're for me. The yarn is Classic Elite Renaissance (the green) and Nashua Ivy(the white and sparkly).

Other patterns I've knit more than once:
Kitty Bath Mitt, a free pattern from lionbrand.com (I'd link you but you need to sign in to see the pattern.) It's my go-to pattern for a baby gift, especially fun if you include a copy of the Little Golden Book The Color Kittens.

The rest of the repeats are hats, all but one from free patterns:

Bobbi from Cathy Carron's Hip Hats

Fake Isle Is there a more fun use for a skein of Noro? I think not!

And I do not have a decent photo of a hat made following the construction of Coronet. I change up that cable with something Viking from Elsebeth Lavold and do it in yak yarn with two layers. Take that, Wisconsin winter!

Keepin' It Scandihoovian

While waiting for the mail to bring the book on how to get the Swedish spinning wheel up and running, I thought I'd get in some knitting. Tom needed a new winter hat so I handed him my favorite collection of hat patterns, Hats on! by Charlene Schurch.

He narrowed down his favorites to three, then down to one: the Norwegian Star.

Can you believe I cast on for this Friday evening, knit through a couple of hours of Wisconsin Public Radio programming, knit a bit on Saturday afternoon and again on Saturday evening, and finished the hat on Sunday morning?

The yarn is Aussi Wool, one skein in Cherry Tomato and one in Commodore. It's "100% premium Australian wool" but the Chinese spinning job is not premium. There are occasional losely-spun clumps and even a knot, two things I do not expect in the 200-yard skein. I do love the hat pattern, though. It's clear, well-written, and has charts large enough to read with ease.

The Technology at Hand

This is the way I wind yarn from a hank into a ball. There are better ways, all of which involve a swift and winder. These are at the top of my Wish List. Never used either myself but I have seen them in use at yarn stores. They do a faster and a neater job than I could ever do with just the two chairs and my two hands.

I do have an unused item of wool equipment you might like to meet. It came from Sweden to Minnesota in 1882. Here it is:
The wheel belonged to Anna Brita Dahlgren Berglund, Tom's great-grandmother from Ragunda in Jemtland, which is in central Sweden. The wheel used to be a Swedish blue. In the 1960's, one of Tom's sisters painted her turquoise. Go figure the chances that we would have also painted our fireplace turquoise several years ago.

The wheel seems to be in great shape, with all parts moving freely and smoothly. The last time I spun was almost 30 years ago. It was on a friend's wheel. Time to learn to use this one and, to that end, I have ordered a couple of books. I also have the names of several people in Wisconsin who repair old wheels, should this one be less functional than I believe.

If you have advice, please leave it in the comments. Thanks!

Time Cures Knitting Fatigue

You know how it is when you've spent too long and too much effort in cooking a meal, it doesn't taste as good as you think it should? Everyone else at the table loves the food but you, the cook, you're finding fault. This is too bland; that's too salty; the one over there is too whatever.

It's how I felt about the His/Her Reversible Scarf from Cables Untangled by Melissa Leapman. The construction crosses cables on both right and wrong side rows and the work went on and on. It was a slow knit and you had to keep careful count. On and on and on it went. Really, it was like an evil scarf from a fairytale: no matter how much I knit, the end was never near.

And then, finally, one day the scarf was long enough to bind off. Oh, the happy, happy day! Knowing intellectually it had to be okay but finding endless fault with the thing, I handed off the scarf to my younger daughter. She didn't wear it much.

Which confirmed my darkest suspicions about this scarf. It was too this and it was not enough that, just like the tired cook's dinner.

And then, today, she wore it. Father Time has soothed my cable-stressed brow and that scarf looks great. It does everything it's supposed to. Forgive the photos of a project off the needles a couple of years? What a revelation it is!

To celebrate the Autumn that is well and truly upon us in Wisconsin, here is Tom and our Gang of Three (Jack the Beagle, Sally the Dowager Empress Cat, and Nala the Orange Ninja Kitty con Fuego) all curled up for a nap.