A Bluestocking Knits

Aktion 0195

Finished, thanks to a couple of extra rehearsals of the Bach "St. John Passion".  The wool is one of the limited runs of Lang Jawoll Aktion -- this one is last August's, apparently, color 132.0195.

I worked them rather longer than usual, and still had quite a lot of wool left over.  They softened up nicely in the wash, too.

I love the little spool of reinforcing thread that came tucked inside the ball.  I didn't use it, though, not sure why, maybe I just forgot.

I had to start the second sock three times, to get the colors to match with the first one -- but by golly, it worked!

Pathétique

Well, this is my sorry output since Christmas.  Not very impressive, is it! but at least it does sound better in French.  So this is part of the leg of the first father-in-law sock, and even less of one for myself when I found some Jawoll Aktion at the local craft store -- who frequently surprise me, because, to be honest, most of what they have is eyelash yarn.

Sigh.

Fruit Coulis

Some knee socks for Julia, Jitterbug in "Fruit Coulis", with a K3, P1, K1, P1 rib, offset by three at the cuff, as in the Yarrow Ribbed Socks from Knitting Vintage Socks, but with a standard slip stitch heel and wedge toe.

The color is even more vivid in real life, I assure you.

I have been listening to a new album of mine, "Le Jour du Poisson" by Thomas Fersen.  He has a song each on two of the French Putomayo albums, "French Playground" and "Paris", both of which albums we listen to quite a lot -- this is how I heard of him.  I find his music fascinating -- melodic and quirky, intelligently crafted, with each song having a character completely its own and yet still recognizably "Fersen".  One song has a klezmer-y feel, another salsa, one a rather thrilling tango, one a lovely lilting piano and orchestra accompaniment that makes it almost a lullaby, another has a rather formal brass band intro and then sweeps in with an unexpectedly charming lounge-singer feel.  Fersen's voice is rough and smoky -- very Gauloise.  I suspect that Fersen's music might bear comparisons to Tim Finn's, also quirky, melodic, and highly intelligent.  Alas, that I do not speak French! for I am somewhat dismayed that I understand very little of Fersen's lyrics -- one of the things I appreciate deeply about Tim Finn is that his lyrics are so interesting (and they rhyme, always for me a sign that the writer has given a lot of thought to what he wants to say) -- but this is certainly my own limitation, and not Fersen's!

Now is the Caroling Season

I'm in the middle of a long week-end of concerts -- well, two, to be honest, but we usually do only one! and so it feels rather intense.  This year we are singing, in addition to some of the wonderful carols from the first volume of "Carols for Choirs", the "Gloria" by Francis Poulenc.  I wasn't so sure about this piece when we sang it some years ago, but it's growing on me.  I'm a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to church music -- sometimes, the more ancient it is, the better!  Well, that's a sweeping generalization, but modern stuff usually leaves me rather cold.  But after six or eight weeks of rehearsals, the Poulenc has gotten fun to sing -- difficult, though, not like, say "Messiah", which is not only possibly my favorite piece ever to sing, out of a very extensive field, but wonderfully sensible.  The Poulenc has some very strange leaps and progressions that puzzle when you are picking them out on the piano, but come together in a surprisingly cinematic way.  In fact, I find myself humming snatches of it and "scoring" movies in my head -- one theme in the "Agnus Dei" sounds rather like a 1930s horror movie, frightening and poignant at the same time, the "Domine Deus Unigenite" is quite rollicking, even "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", and the last movement, with its dreamy "tu solus altissimus," seems to belong in a bittersweet 1960s French romance, all rainy umbrellas and Parisian melancholy.

We also have unusually early calls this year -- had almost an hour this afternoon between the end of rehearsal and the beginning of the concert -- and so I've gotten quite far on the second Spey Valley sock, almost down to the heel already ....

Thoughts on the Fuzzyfeet

What have I been doing all this month, you ask?  Knitting?  Ha!  I have been driving small children hither and yon -- tonight I am up late waiting to go and collect my mouse/little angel/Gingerette from Dress Rehearsal #1.

Well, I have managed to winkle out of my free minute-and-a-half this month a pair of the famous Fuzzyfeet by Theresa Stenersen of Bagatell, though.  These were going to be a Christmas present, but I've sort of, well, redirected them a bit.  Here are the before and after photos, with the first half of a pair of Spey Valley socks for scale.

Zoinks!  I washed them on my front-loader's warm-cold setting but did not "stop when the desired size" as I wanted them to be easy-care, and I personally am not about the hand-washing of the socks, and don't want to mess around with running out to the machine every two minutes, so I doubted that auntie would be either.  They shrank much more than expected, unfortunately.  I don't mind much, though -- it was an experiment, after all.  The felted fabric is rather fascinating -- wonderful, how all of the wobbly bits just sort of disappear, too!

I did have to break into the second skein to finish the last two inches, so Fuzzyfeet knitters, take heed.

Alas, they are now far too small for auntie, and so they have been glommed onto by Laura, who is quite taken with them.  She was, however, quite mortified when I asked her to step out onto the front porch this morning to model them in the only available light, and she shrieked mightily.  "Mom! I'm still in my pyjamas!"  So the photo is a bit rushed.

Still, the Fuzzies are warm and much as the name implies, and Julia is already casting not-so-subtle hints about a pair for her as well.

Oh, there's my warning bell -- off I go --

LOTR

You know, I thought that when the girls were both in school -- even better, both at the same school -- that I would have more time.  Wrong!  It's a little-known fact that school- and extra-curricular activities actually expand to fill parental time.

So there hasn't been much knitting....

I did manage a pair of socks this month.  I found the yarn rather unexpectedly at one of my local craft stores -- they usually have mostly acrylics and novelty yarns, although a bit more "upscale" than Michaels' selections -- but at the moment, they actually have a basket of sock yarn! so I snapped up a ball with my 40% off coupon -- Meilenweit Stile in color 8005, a blend of blacks, creams, lavendar-greys, and sages.

It was not, I admit, particularly pleasant to knit, feeling rather stiff and artificial in my hands, but it has softened up a bit with washing, and I'm counting on it being as filzfrei and extra-strapazierfähig as promised on the label ("non-felting and hard-wearing").  It bled a bit in the sink the first time -- a midrange blue, curiously, so apparently the black isn't really -- which toned down the cream somewhat.  I'd thought the cream was a bit loud, as it happens (!), so for myself I wasn't terribly annoyed, but it's something to take into account next time.

 

These are plain stockinette with an eye-of-partridge heel and the squared-off grafted toe from the Jaywalker pattern.

I will probably forever after remember these as my "LOTR" socks, as I watched the entire cycle of Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" movies and a fair bit of the extras as I knitted!

Now I'm picking up that Ravenclaw "Prisoner of Azkaban" scarf that I started in summer.  (Wool scarves in summer! what was I thinking?)

Missed It By That Much

I didn't have these ready for Laura's first day of school -- got down to the toe shaping last night and decided that I'd rather sleep.  Had everything else ready -- backpacks, lunch boxes, new shoes, clothes laid out, even everything on Julia's kindergarten teacher's list (disinfectant wipes, fabric paint, scissors, 3-pack of T-shirts, etc. etc. etc.) -- so I don't feel too bad about the socks.  I have the flu, in fact, in the middle of a heat wave -- 106° F outside our front door yesterday, 41° C -- so I think I'm doing pretty well to at least be standing up!

So my littlest is a kindergartner.  I got a bit teary-eyed when the time came to say good-bye, although hid it well enough, I think, not to embarrass Julia.  She had fussed dreadfully the first few weeks in both of her years of pre-school, so that I was half-expecting a struggle today, but she and Laura skipped and ran much of the way to school, and after a little story-time from Miss B. -- who read The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn -- Julia ran over to give me a hug, refused a "kissing hand," and ran back to the circle of kids.  I even had time to wave to Laura as she danced gaily into her own classroom.

Now for that second toe!

Thoughts on the Conwy Socks

I am quite in love with these socks and the fabulous Conwy pattern from Nancy Bush's Knitting on the Road.  I must confess that I never have quite absorbed which maneuver makes the left twist and which the right, but even so it was not long before I memorized at least which one came first in the sequence!

The calf shaping allows for a beautifully long and flattering leg -- almost stockings.  I had a feeling that one skein of Jitterbug wouldn't stretch to a pair of Conwys, and so I bought two, and made the leg a half-inch or so longer than in the directions.  The larger gauge of the Jitterbug was enough to make the sock a bit bigger than the 7 in./18 cm circumference of the original, too, without that bothersome tweaking -- these are about 7 1/2 in./19 cm.

I made some minor modifications in the calf shaping, as it seemed to leave the twining cables a bit vague --

As written, the single K columns on either side of the shaping would merge into the reverse st st areas, butting up against the cables and leaving them without their background.  Instead, I worked the first three decreases as in the chart, but shifted the rest so that the 2-stitch reverse st st section stayed intact.  The last 2 decreases I worked with a sl next 2 sts tog, K1, psso -- which called for moving the last st of the rnd from needle 4 to needle 1, and omitting the last p st on the chart, but made the cables stand out nicely.

(Not easy to take a picture of the back of one's leg!)

I also used the Welsh Heel from Knitting Vintage Socks, instead of the round heel in the pattern -- it's fussier, although that might be simply because I've not done it before, and I didn't get it quite right either time, but it seemed appropriate in the circumstances.  It has four lines of decreases instead of the round heel's two, a rather sharp short-row curve at the outside edges, and a lengthier line of paired decreases in the center, on either side of the seam st.  I'm all for historical accuracy in its place, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out why it is written so that the paired decreases are not symmetrical, with K2togs on both sides of the seam st -- surely the Welsh would have figured out that ssk will lean to the left and K2tog to the right?  Ssk is used in the gusset immediately following, after all (or at least its cousin sl 1, K1, psso) -- so I used both, instead of all K2tog.

It makes a generous turn, quite suitable for those with wide heels.

And the Jitterbug softens up a treat with washing -- this one is a lovely deep green, rather more on the bluish side than the yellowish green I might have expected from the name "Velvet Olive," but I bought it for looks, after all!

I listened to an audio version of Monk's Hood while working these, read by Stephen Thorne (who I can't quite place but at times sounds remarkably like John Wood).  It was a pleasant surprise to hear Cadfael say, about two-thirds through the book, "I'm from Gwynedd myself, from the far side of Conwy"!  Thorne does a nice job of characterizing the different voices, giving Cadfael a soft Welsh accent, too, which I quite missed in the television series. 

And if there was any doubt that I am addicted to sock knitting --

Charade socks, in Supersock's "Blues and Purples," cast on while the Conwys were still blocking -- these are for Laura, and I was hoping to get them done for the first day of school, but that is Thursday and I already have ripped out this in the photo, since it was too small ....

How Green Was My Conwy

I've been thinking a lot about family history lately, for various reasons -- not the least being reading the Brother Cadfael books, with Cadfael's quiet pride in his Welshness, remembering again the amazement of finding my own great-great-great-grandparents on the 1841 census in Breconshire, in a little town called Llangattock.  (I had known that they were Welsh, but not where they had lived, or what my great-great-grandmother's parents names were.)

For some time, I've been tempted to knit a project now and then that has a connection to my own family history -- Bavarian stockings, a Scottish shawl, something Irish -- I'd long admired the Conwy socks from Knitting on the Road, and when I saw Jitterbug's "Velvet Olive" colorway, I thought the two would be a perfect match -- that the stuff says "Made in Wales" seemed to bring everything together.  (More details and photos of Conwy when I've finished the second one!)

The lamp is my great-grandfather's -- he was a fireboss in Pennsylvania around the turn of the last century, and this was his safety lamp.  His parents were German, and he married the daughter of a Welsh miner, who had immigrated with his young family in 1869, working his way up from the pits of South Wales to become a mining supervisor and owner in America.

I haven't read How Green Was My Valley in years -- I remember being deeply moved by it when I was thirteen or fourteen, I guess, not only by the story itself but by a sense of kinship with young Huw Morgan.  This quotation brings back to me some of its lyricism and poignancy, and explains a little of what I find so fascinating and timeless about family history:

"I saw behind me those who had gone, and before me those who are to come. I looked back and saw my father, and his father, and all our fathers, and in front to see my son, and his son, and the sons upon sons beyond. And their eyes were my eyes. As I felt, so they had felt and were to feel, as then, so now, as tomorrow and forever. Then I was not afraid, for I was in a long line that had no beginning and no end, and the hand of his father grasped my father's hand, and his hand was in mine, and my unborn son took my right hand, and all, up and down the line that stretched from Time That Was to Time That Is, and Is Not Yet, raised their hands to show the link, and we found that we were one, born of Woman, Son of Man, made in the Image, fashioned in the Womb by the Will of God, the Eternal Father."

Yes, We Have No Bananas

But we do have Monkeys!

These arrived yesterday from Specs of Specs Knits.  I fell in love with the colorway as soon as I opened the box --

Socks That Rock medium-weight in "Nodding Violet".  So gorgeous!  The blue is a little more vivid than I could capture, but still, this gives a pretty good idea.  Also in the package was a box of salt-water taffy (a perfect treat, as we missed it at the county fair this year!) and a postcard of the colonial kitchen at Cedar Grove at Fairmount Park -- not only an intriguing thing in itself, but also cleverly color-matched by Specs to the socks.

("That salt-water taffy sure looks good," Julia said with all the subtlety of a five-year-old.)

A few action shots before it gets to hot to even want to think about thick wool socks -- the beautifully-grafted toe --

and the fabulous swirly-swirls.  Thank you, Specs!

("So how's the taffy, Julia?" "Ih's guh--!" she said, appreciatively if somewhat incoherently.)