Not Striving for Perfection

I wouldn't say that I'm a perfectionist, but I do have strong tendencies in that direction.

This has its ups and downs.

When I was in graduate school it meant that I never stopped revising and editing my papers until the moment I turned them in, because I always felt they could be just a little bit better. I did very well in school but I didn't sleep much those years.

My perfectionist tendencies serve me fairly well in my knitting; I am technically proficient enough to be able to solve most knitting problems and turn out projects that are generally mistake free. The Italian occasionally chides me for not "letting things go" more, but if I see a mistake I can fix without too much trouble I will do so. I like to do it right.

Where it hasn't served me well is with my spinning. I have much too much spinning fiber in the house that I haven't tried working with because it's "too nice" for me to use until I know how to spin better. I don't have any target for when I would be "good enough" as a spinner to spin any of these lovely fibers, but I've decided that enough is enough.

It's time to start spinning. For real.

I'm not going to jump right into the quiviut that's lurking somewhere in a bin - it's so incredibly soft, and so incredibly expensive, that I will wait a little longer to attempt that, thank you very much.

But I have lots of lovely wool and small amounts of all sorts of other things and there's no reason not to do something with it all. I think the only thing I will require of myself is that I be mindful about it: I'll try to pay attention, take notes, keep track of what I do so in the future I'll be able to remember what I liked, what I didn't, and what fibers I still haven't tried!

This is what I'm working on now:

Lisa Souza Blue Faced Leicester. I bought 4 oz. at Stitches and it is wonderful to work with. I had made note of some green Socks that Rock yarn earlier in the day, but when I spotted this top I just had to have it. Lisa Souza's prices are very reasonable and the quality of the product is fabulous!




I'm spinning with a true worsted draft and it is so different from any spinning I've done before. I can't do it solely by feel yet so I really have to watch what I'm doing, but it is mesmerizing.

The plan is to make a three ply sock yarn which will be lustrous, durable and very, very green!

Socks of Love

I have been knitting socks for a long time. I put off making my first sock for an even longer time before that.

As an experienced knitter I spent a couple of years (off and on) reading a sock knitting pattern and wondering "what the hell?" There just didn't seem to be any way that it would work! I don't have a good visual/spacial mental imagery ability, so as I read the instructions I would get to a point where I just couldn't picture how the next step would work, and I wasn't going to start the pattern if I couldn't understand it.

That went on for some time, until I got fed up and just started knitting. I got to the confusing point and kept on going, trusting the pattern writer (and technical editor) that it would work.

And it did. It was magic, pure effing magic.

I don't know how many years ago I knit that first sock, but I think it was before we moved to the west coast so that's been at least twelve years. I have knit lots of socks since then, and have for the last five years or so always had a sock in progress. I've knit them for myself, for two different friends, for my husband, for my MIL, my FIL, but for the longest time I didn't knit any for my mother.

She didn't want any.

This was strange for so many reasons:
-my mom was a knitter. A fabulous knitter who appreciated handknits.
-my mom is from the South but lives in the Northeast, and she is always cold. Always.
-she wears wool socks much of the year (again, always cold).

I asked her once why she didn't like hand knit wool socks, and she said they would be too scratchy, too rough, not washable, she liked the store bought ones, etc.

Finally I got tired of asking for explanations and I just handed a sock to her one day and told her to try it on (after first explaining that she couldn't have that one, it was already promised to someone else).

She skeptically pulled the sock on her foot and her eyes went wide. "OH" she said in tones of wonderment, "I like this!"

I graciously refrained from saying "I told you so" and promised to make her socks for her very own. I made her one pair in Socks that Rock, and the next time she came to visit she very coyly told me that if I made her more socks she would wear them!

So I made her another pair in STR. And another pair in Cherry Tree Hill Supersock. And she wore them and wore them and wore them. Until, you guessed it, she wore through them.

So I have learned how to darn socks. (In the meantime I made her another pair in a yarn with 20% nylon and am working on yet another pair with nylon content).

One pair just had little holes at the toe, those were fairly quick to darn.

You can tell where they are darned because I was darning in green/yellow leftover sock yarn. One of the downsides of almost always knitting socks toe-up is that I have almost no leftover sock yarn in the house.

The remaining two pair have big holes under the heel of the foot.


Because my mother is very sensitive to rough edges and ridges in her clothes, I am darning a large amount of surface area. It's tedious, you have to watch carefully what you are doing, and it generates lot of ends. I am not enjoying it very much, but I will do this for my mother. My mother is not well and living three thousand miles away there's not a lot I can do for her, but this I can and will do.

Let's not talk about the holes in The Italian's socks.