socks

Home again, home again

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Here we are, back in Birmingham. After a day of sleep and a day of running errands (including replacing my phone, lost, presumed stolen, in the wilds of Toronto), I’m ready to tackle Mount Laundry, put the luggage away, and get back to work. Though I moved away so long ago, Toronto still feels like home to me: my big city face and fast-walking feet snapped into place like they were just waiting to come out and play. Still, it’s nice to be back where things move more slowly, in the place where I keep my tea things and my knitting chair and my cats and my deck full of plants and my own bathroom with a shower that doesn’t require a pilot’s license to operate. (Seriously, y’all should’ve seen the shower at the last place we stayed.)

In between family time and wedding chuppah-holding and birthdaying (the day after one sister’s wedding was the other sister’s birthday) and such, I managed to visit a few yarn shops, exhibiting admirable restraint (in my humble opinion), at least until the end. Unfortunately, that restraint extended to taking photos, for which I’m kicking myself now. However, here’s the rundown, in the order visited: Continue reading →

No sooner am I home…

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…than I’m off again. It feels like I just got back from DC (wait, I did just get back—I’ve only been home a week), and I’m packing to head up to Toronto. This trip is for fun: my sister, who lives up in the T dot, is getting married to a lovely man, and the clan is gathering for the event. My other sister has rented a cottage, so there will be city time and lake time and family time and time with old friends from the punk rock stompin’ around town years. Many of my internet friends are gathering while we’re there (for another wedding—apparently it’s the thing to do right now), so there will also be time with old friends I’ve never met in real life. And there will be knitting. I got shockingly little knitting done during TNNA, and hooboy, am I going to make up for that in the next couple of weeks. (See above re: lake time: there’s a whole nine glorious days of it.) Of course, most of it will be work knitting, but that’s my favourite kind of work, so I don’t mind one bit.  Continue reading →

Sunday Sock Day

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Yesterday was a most excellent knitting day here at the Casa de Cusser. All summer, I’ve been working on design samples, one after the other, many of which I can’t even talk about here until some time in December. They’ve been fun projects, and I’ve enjoyed making them, no doubt. Too many work projects in a row can make one a bit squirrelly, though. With all the note-taking, the directions-following (even if they’re your own directions), the need for a perfect finished object: after a while, a knitter needs to break free, you know? I try to have a fun, playful/mindless/doesn’t-have-to-be-perfect project to turn to, and with the end of the tea cozy, it was time for something new. I’ve been obsessing about self-striping sock yarns again, so I dug into the stash and found just the thing: an insanely bright self-striping sock yarn bought at the dreary end of winter last year. Continue reading →

Hybrid Vigour: Continuing Adventures in Socks

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Some of you may remember the Great Handspun Sock Blowout of this past winter, in which my two pairs of handspun socks developed a cascade of failure points, resisting all attempts to save them from an untimely demise. At the time, I decided to rethink how I was spinning sock yarn, and relegated the yarn already spun to other projects. The one exception — a cabled Romney yarn — repaid my trust by becoming a sturdy (if somewhat fuzzy) pair of warm, comfortable, and durable socks. (So far. Knock on wood. With fingers crossed.)

These are exactly as cozy as they look.
These are exactly as cozy as they look.

(If you’re interested, the pattern is Kalajoki by Tiina Seppälä. It’s top-down, which I don’t normally do, but I fell in love with the waves down the leg and the rather ingenious anatomical toe.) Continue reading →

How can we learn if we don’t sometimes fail?

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I’ve run into a problem.

holey socks

My first handspun socks, the product of the Great Shetland Experiment, are experiencing severe structural failure. Barely past their first birthday, these beloved objects are wearing out, and quickly. I darn, I patch, I try to save, but as soon as I do, new holes appear. The same thing is happening with another, newer pair, too. Since I made these socks from the yarn up, I’ve only myself to blame, so I’d better figure out what went wrong. Continue reading →

It’s all in the details

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Even here in the Dirty South, the cold is coming. Well, as much cold as we get here, which by Northern standards is more like a brief flirtation with the idea of being chilly. Still, the air has gone from soft to crisp, and I’ve been here long enough that I get whiny at anything below about 45 Fahrenheit (that’s around 7 Celsius for the rest of the world). (I’ve also been here long enough that I describe temperature in Fahrenheit, though I use the ‘double it and add 30’ conversion from Bob & Doug McKenzie* to make sense of it.) Here are the latest preparations for the eight week onslaught of not-being-quite-warm-enough. Continue reading →