Why knitting tames the savage beast

I qualify myself as a process knitter. The pattern has to be interesting or the yarn has to be interesting or even the television show that's on has to be interesting. And sometimes I care about the finished garment - for instance, I wear a pair of brown Evangelines almost every day while I'm at work. I wear one of several pairs of handknit socks almost every day.

But on top of all that, I knit because I like to knit. I like to come home after a frustrating day dealing with grad school and do something that I know I am good at. I like how meditative knitting is, pulling string through loops in the same gesture over and over and over again. I like that it doesn't change. The basics of knit, purl, decreasing, increasing, and cabling don't change, it's how you combine those stitches to get something beautiful and practical. Not like my research, where if I change one thing without knowing it, I could have months of things not working. Like what happened this spring/summer.

When I am depressed about not meeting my advisor's expectations or not writing the things she wants me to write, I know that at the end of the day, I can knit a few rows of something and feel like I am a master of something. I can also see myself improving at knitting, getting better reading patterns, and intuitively grasping what is going on with a design more easily than when I started. It's therapy and an ego boost all in one!

And really, who are we kidding? I just love working with my hands with fiber!

That being said, if I knit all the time for myself, I'd have to buy a new bureau to house all the socks. So, family and friends get pairs. For instance, I knit these(Rav link) for my friend Celeste out of Noro Kureyon Sock color S180.



I based the pattern on Beth LaPensee's Jenny Wren but with several modifications. I knit them top-down over 80 stitches. The cable (c6front, p1, c6back) is slightly offset by a k4p2 on each side of the foot. The rest of the sock is ribbed with a k4p2 ribbing, which gives them some stretch. I knit them with an Eye of the Partridge Heel, my first and I think my preferred heel over k1s1 reinforcement. I have no idea what my gauge is, but I knit them on 1.5s. Obviously I didn't match stripes, because as I was winding the Noro into balls (necessary! It's so sticky!) I found one knot in the middle of a blue section that caused the color to jump back up to the pink section before it. HEIN!! I ended up chopping out some of that pink section to get to the blue on the second foot but ran out of yarn for the toe. Luckily, I had some similar-colored yarn (orange transitioning into purple/brick red) left over from the first sock and so was able to join without too much odd transition. You can sort of tell on the sock with the red toe that the orange was originally going to purple before the join but unless I tell C, I don't think she'll notice.

What I was going for were simple, colorful socks that were large enough for someone not used to hand knit socks to easily pull them on and off like normal socks. Because I don't know about you, but most of my handknit socks are form-fitting like nobody's business. I like them that way, as they don't bag or slouch or get balled up at my toes like some of my socks, but my mom says that she's afraid to pull hers on for fear of ripping them. And these definitely fit the bill. I'm even thinking of frogging the Widdershins I knit earlier this summer and knitting another pair of these except for the fact that I knit two pairs out of Kureyon S180 this summer and I'm kind of over it.

Next time: A departure from socks with as I show off my new mittens! And perhaps discuss how it came to be that all my clothes are being kept in the kitchen!