Knitting Club

Thanks to everyone who has participated in my stash sale so far - there is even some yarn left, so stop it out if you haven’t!

Late Saturday night I put on for my first couple of socks this winter.

The design is “Little Pumpkins,#8221; and the thread is Wollmeise 80/20 in Kurbis.

First, comments on the pattern.  It’s translated from German, so some of the phraseology and chart symbols are different from the usual US pattern, but nothing that can’t be figured out (the first line is especially challenging, I recommend reading the form page on Ravelry for an account of what it means.  Other than that, the practice is extremely easy to memorize, and goes fairly quickly.  It kind of looks like pumpkins… more so if it is stretched out.

It is plain on 5 dpns, and I usually only use 4.  I’m actually having some trouble - I suppose when knitting with so many DPNs, I incline to keep my wrist differently, causing some cramping.  I’m trying to concentrate on keeping them upright when I knit.  The pattern calls for 4 repeats of the pumpkins (2 pumpkins per repeat) but I guess I will do three… I don’t like my socks that tall.

Then again, the cramping could be caused by the yarn.  I’m about to make an unpopular opinion, so check out!  Wollmeise has super lovely colors, but the yarn itself is very strange.  I’m not certain that I wish it.  It has a really hard twist.  The thread is not very resilient, and in fact doesn’t feel so often like wool to me.  I get to consciously stop myself from knitting it too tightly to compensate (I believe my fingers think it’s cotton) and I’m a loose knitter usually.  I’m hoping I can power through these socks - the colour is holding me going, it’s actually even more concentrated than it looks here!

Of course, considering how difficult this thread is to get now (I got mine when it wasn’t so bad, long ago) I’m unlikely to get anymore, so this shouldn’t be a problem.  I am not the class to stalk sock yarn - there are so many lovely indie dyers that I can ever get my fix through Etsy… and not being primarily a sock knitter, I incline to go through sock yarn at a somewhat slow pace.

Finally, here is a better impression of my silken scabbard.

I’m much furthur along now - I am approaching the rent for the arms.  It’s kind of slow going, as top down sweaters always are at this point.  The thread is behaving nicely, but I am concerned about my gauge loosening up, so I’m taking frequent measurements.  I can’t say this is the quickest knit ever, and I view the neck directions were a little confusing, but I am enjoying it, and would urge the convention so far.

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