The pattern was my very first experience with a Mystery Knitalong! Kirsten has been doing a mystery sock during October, ahem, excuse me, during SOCKtober, for a few years now. This pattern, TTL Mystery Sock 2010, was fun and easy; a perfect match for the yummy skein of Skinny Bugga that I got at SAFF in 2009. The color is Tomato Frog, and very hard to capture with my amateur photog skillz.

If I can keep myself from casting on for all the ideas and plans floating around in my head (That’ll be hard because I already cast on for new slippers for Gerald), then I might finish these very soon!  Can’t wait to see how the yarn and pattern look after blocking!

In giveaway news…

I printed out all the entries (over 100!) from the Stitch ‘n Bitch Superstar Knitting giveaway post, cut them up into individual bits of paper and had Maggie draw three out of the proverbial hat. The winners are:

• Lelah
• Linda
• Ivy

All three have been contacted, and will receive their books soon! Thanks to everyone who entered. I wish I could send a book to each of you!

I feel like we’ve been on giveaway overdrive, but get this. I have another giveaway coming soon!

I’m calling it done even though it’s not quite. I have one underarm to graft and a few ends to weave in and then blocking. I made it lickety-split. I swatched then cast on on Sunday afternoon.

Kid sweaters usually come together lickety-split; that’s probably why I knit so many of them.

This sweater doesn’t belong to me. I made it for a class I’m teaching at my LYS (“Custom-sized Pullover for your Kid” is the name of the class). The striped raglan will live at Gate City Yarns for a while, but maybe if I make them another sample, they’ll give this one back to me after a while.

The yarn is O-Wool Balance (organic, how fancy) and it was really, really nice to work with. I am in spazzy love with it. The blend is 50 Merino/ 50 Cotton and it has all this lovely tweediness that I think gives the sweater such charachter.

Can you guess the pattern? Of course, it’s EZ, but I used a Spun-Out design called A Family of Raglans (SO45/WG69 on Rav). I have Zimmermann raglan patterns in the books, but this – a single page leaflet available for $1 from Schoolhouse Press – is a pattern chock full of new-to-me information. Worth $1? Damn straight.

baby got back

There are short rows hidden in there to make the back longer than the front. I’m terrible at knitting short rows, and if I showed you a better picture you might see how unsightly they are on the yoke. This bothers me only slightly, thank goodness, because what’s really important here is that it’s a highly serviceable sweater.

Cute, no?

Some basic notes on the design:

• I used a smaller needle on 100% of the stitches for the edges. It really doesn’t get any easier than that.
• The decreases at the raglan lines were suggested in the pattern: Dec rnd: K2tog, p1, ssk. Plain rnd: knit. I’d never used it before and I like it a lot.
• Um, that’s it. It was a really easy sweater.

Now all that’s left is that other underarm, and blocking! And then I say goodbye to this sweet striped raglan for a long, long time…

I’m sewing the ends in this version, which is why the sweater is inside out, and that got me to thinking about something I always think about when sewing in ends.

Have you ever watched the DVD of Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitting Workshop (much scrolling required)? She spends a bit of time talking about finishing your sweater very neatly in order to be able to wear it inside out.

Are you kidding me?!?!?

No, she’s not kidding. I’ve never done it*, and I think I have a long way to go before my finishing would be so good to flip a finished sweater to the wrong side.  But seriously, if you get it out of your head that it’s the wrong side the other side is just as fascinating. Maybe even prettier than the right side.  That is, if you can get over it being the wrong side.

Marinate on that for a bit. I’ll be over here full of hearts for the foreseeable future.

*I knit a stripey hat that I wear inside out; reverse stockinette in stripes is just about the easiest way to make knitting look more complicated than it is. Not brave enough yet to wear a whole sweater inside out.

After much consideration (and math), I have decided to make the I Heart You sweater for child sizes only.  I apologize if I told you otherwise, but the design would have needed to be altered so much to be flattering for women. Thank you, Anne, for helping me see the light. I would have been writing two separate patterns.

The sizes will range from age 2 to 16.  Or, since kids vary so much, for a chest circumference of 20″ to 32″.

I’m working on an alternate version with some Lanaloft Sports Weight (sleeves first).  The red white & blue (tempered a bit with some Carolina Blue – Go Heels!) is so very patriotic and I so love it.  Lanaloft and Nature Spun are both awesome sport weight yarns from Brown Sheep.  Have you tried them yet?  I’m in the middle of deep infatuation with them both – even more so because they are made right here in the USA.  Lanaloft is a singles and the Nature Spun is plied.  Both knit up wonderfully.

You’d think I work for Brown Sheep.  But in fact, I do not.

The socks I am mending today are an odd choice.  They are EZ’s Moccasin Socks; it would be ideal to re-sole them completely instead of repairing the hole.  But because I am a darning maniac these are the last of my holey socks.  Besides, a hole is a hole is a hole.

Gather your supplies.

• Holey sock.
• Matching leftover sock yarn.  If you no longer have any leftovers, choose a close match.
• Long darning needle, blunt tip if possible.
• Scissors.
• Darning egg or mushroom. As you can see, I do not own a tool specifically for darning.  I have used a softball but this plastic football is my current favorite.  You could also try a lightbulb, or a baseball, or anything round with a hard surface.

Before you begin darning, turn the sock inside out and pull off any fuzz balls that are in the sock.

Begin now.

Turn the sock right side out again.  We’re going to darn from the right side.  With 3 or 4 yards of matching yarn (I’m using contrasting yarn so you can see what I’m doing), thread your darning needle.  The thread should be double — the needle is at the center, and the ends of the threads meet.

A very long thread is used because the darn will be stronger if you have fewer breaks in the yarn.  Ideally, you would mend the entire hole with one length of yarn.

Insert your darning football, er, mushroom.

Pull the sock tight, and center the hole over your darning tool.  Hold it with your non-sewing hand at the back.

And here we are ready to begin.

The patch of darning will go beyond the edges of the hole, and it will be square (my personal preference – round is good, too).  Begin by sewing the needle through the knitted fabric in a running stitch.

Pull the thread through, leaving just 1/2″ – 1″ of a tail.  This will be trimmed later.  Insert the needle again, parallel and close to the first line of stitches, and work back down over the hole.

Continue in this manner, working up and down over the hole.

At the edges of the hole, the knitted fabric is very thin.  Keep this flap of fabric on the outside of the work by keeping the sewing needle under it as you prepare to cover the distance of the hole.  Like this:

Continue until these parallel running stitches completely cover the hole.

Now sew the running stitches perpendicular to the first stitches.  I have changed my thread, but that is only for demonstration.  You will continue on with the same length of thread.

Continue back and forth, weaving the running stitch up and down through the fabric.

When you come to the hole, with no knitted fabric to sew through, weave the yarn over and under the threads that cover the hole.

I never knew it, but when you darn a sock, you’re creating a woven patch to cover the hole.  Simple, really.

When you’ve covered the hole with weaving, you’re done!  Well, almost.

All that’s left to do is neaten things up.  With scissors, trim the flap of fabric close to the work.

Also trim the ends of thread close to the work.

Now you really are done!

Admittedly, a darn is not the prettiest thing, especially in my garish colors here.  But the point is that a sock on the foot is a hundred times better than a sock at the back of your drawer.

A few thoughts.

• Using a doubled thread is optional.  I prefer it because the repair is Very Strong.  Stronger than the original sock, in fact.
• Darning a big hole takes about 30 minutes.  A smaller hole will take less time to mend.
• You can use this same method to reinforce a weak spot even before a hole appears.
• After wearing your mended socks the patch will begin to felt together.  It will even out and look pretty.  I promise.

RS or WS?

When you darn from the right side, the wrong of the sock is very, very neat and tidy.  Much prettier than the right side.

Then why do we darn from the right side?  Wouldn’t we rather have the lovely, smooth surface on the outside?  No.  The smoothness of the inside is perfect for next-to-skin wear, and the outside will soon mat down with wear.

On the other hand, if a few bumps on the inside of the sock don’t bother you, then by all means, darn from the WS.

Thanks

Big shout out to my mother-in-law, Noreen, for teaching me how to do this.  Also, I should thank Cindy for bringing up the whole darning issue in the first place.

And dudes, in the poll I mentioned at the beginning,  33% of respondents answered the question “Do you darn socks” with , “Yes, of course I darn.  Doesn’t everybody?”  That made me pretty happy.  If you are an experienced darner, I’d love your input!

Phew, a whole post about mending socks with not a single “darn” pun.  Score!

I pulled the book off the shelf yesterday specifically to read just that chapter.  I’m teaching a Learn to Knit class at my LYS and will be talking about gauge during Sunday’s class.  The class is the second in a series of three.  The first class we cast-on, knit and purled.  When they come to class on Sunday the students will have a square piece of stockinette fabric.  Hopefully.

Since I want to get the newbies to understand Gauge,  I pulled out my bag of swatches to bring to class.  I found this:

This is the first knitting I ever produced.  I borrowed my friend’s Stitch & Bitch book and sat down with some heather gray Red Heart and size 8 needles that my sister gave me.  I’m amazed that I still have this bit of knitting.  But when Debbie Stoller tells you to hold onto it for posterity, you pretty much do what she says.

During my first two years of knitting, I never knit a gauge swatch.  Or if I did it was a half-assed one.  I knit them now because I like to; I collect them.  Sometimes my gauge swatches are the beginning and end of a project.  Sometimes they evolve into something more.  And to be honest, I still don’t always knit a swatch.  Really!

Here is a picture from May ’08.  If you click on it you can see notes on each swatch.  Since I took that picture, I have made many more swatches and found older ones, too.

So, back to knitting class on Sunday.  I am struggling with how to approach the gauge issue with newbies.  I agree with EZ when she says, “GAUGE is the most important principle in knitting.”  I will teach the new knitters how to measure it, tell them what it means, and illustrate what might happen if they ignore the swatching process.

But I think the gauge part of knitting is something that you have to learn over time.  You need one gloriously effed up project – hours and hours of knitting – to teach you that swatching is a step not to be ignored.

That’s about enough gauge talk, right?  How about a free hat pattern?

I was going to call this pattern, written for the newbies, “How to Knit a Hat” but that was taken.  So instead I named it Elementary.  Knit in the round with worsted weight yarn, garter stitch brim, spiral-y decreases at the top.

You can get this one-page download for free on Ravelry.  CLICK HERE!

P.S. Don’t forget to check your gauge before you begin: 20 sts = 4″ measured over stockinette stitch.