PLY SOCK Newsletter SALE!

Big News!  My article on

 Breaking out of a Rut: Getting a new sock yarn groove 

is featured in PLY Magazine's newsletter this month!

I'm excited!  To celebrate...
Please save 25% off ALL my Rav patterns, including the sock patterns until January 14th!  (ends midnight, Central Time, US & Canada)

Use the coupon code:
PLYSock 
and get the discount!

  Here are a few socks I've designed over the years, to get you in the mood. :)

Check out just my sock designs here!

Spin On!

the spirit of the thing

I have a habit of attempting to publish a pattern around Valentine's Day.  Some years, this works out.  Other years, well, something gets in the way, and what was intended to be a Valentine's Day release (or before Valentine's...) doesn't work out.  Some years I run a big sale.  Sometimes nothing happens at all.  I am working ahead this time, because, well, it turns out that when everyone has been sick, you cannot predict what things will look like a day or two away.  I've been trying to rest a lot, but in the meanwhile, things still seem to be happening online, with or without me--patterns and articles I wrote a long time ago are finding their way in the world, without my help, and that is heartening.

 Last year, I published the Thump Thump Mittens, (Be still my heart). Another year, I did the Hole Inside Mitts, which is really more a story about heartbreak...but relevant to Valentine's.  Long ago, I designed the Heart's Ease Socks, while pondering things that cause heart ache.  Distal was first published long before Valentine's, but I knit the red version out of handspun for myself...and it became my go to shawl/scarf for this cold time of year.

A long (long) time ago, I came up with the Turkish Lace Camisole, but I'd have to say that unless I'm wearing the dark green linen version of these, as a layer, it doesn't get much use these days...and definitely not over a bathing suit :)  The post-twin figure doesn't lend itself to this item, but surely someone out there needs something fetching for a cruise or mid-winter trip to somewhere warm....?

This is a circuitous way of saying that I've got a new pattern coming, and I'm working on it.  If I feel up to it, it might be published by Valentine's Day...?! Or not.

In the meanwhile, I'm showing you lots of happy red items to knit,(Just look away from all that winter weather if it gets you down and knit--it is cheering!) and all these patterns are also available on Loveknitting.com, which is selling a lot of patterns these days...complete with the yarn to make them.

I got my own little present today--The Jewish Independent, a Vancouver publication, posted an article that I wrote that I'm especially fond of.  It combines two of my great loves: Talmud and working with wool (knitting/spinning, etc.).  It's called In the spirit of Jewish law.

Stay warm!  Knit (and wear) wool!

PS: This weekend, we've got a project--I'm lining up little boys with lots of Valentines this year for their school classmates!  It will be the first time they can write their names on every card.  Very exciting. :)

fibery update

I think this is the preschooler virus winter.  There are kids at school who have been more sick, with antibiotics and there are kids who have bypassed it all.  For us, it has amounted to a day or two on the couch with one or two sick kids nearly every single school week since January, and many weekends.  Both boys had a pretty quiet weekend and stayed home on Monday, and I assigned them each a living room couch.  They went back to school Tuesday, and they seem to be doing ok for now.  That might change at any time.

We normally pvr the specific educational kids' shows that we let them watch, but I have given in to the inevitable...when somebody is home now, we have "sick TV."  That is just leaving on CBC kids or PBS or Family Jr (the three kid oriented channels we get) on.  I know some kids watch this much TV every day--crazy! but we only do it when somebody is too sick to make it at preschool.

Older kids read when they are sick (I certainly did) but my guys aren't readers yet.  So, we take naps, have snacks, and watch a lot of "sick TV" on the couch.  Oh well.  They seem to learn stuff from it.  As soon as they are well enough to play normally, the two of them raise heck, so then it's time to go back to school!

Sick TV lets me do the bare minimum in our house.  I used to think that a sick day would allow for endless knitting time.  Not so.  It allows me to do the three extra loads of laundry (sick kids, remember?) and figure out the next meal and snack.  It lets me do crazy things like trying to answer emails in a timely fashion.  It lets me (gasp here) go to the bathroom by myself, although even that requires strategies.

When folks are well enough to play, I can spin on my wheel in the basement playroom.  Here are four new skeins of hand spun yarn produced recently:

The fuschia/burgundy skein is a one ply single of burgundy/fuschia medium wool, with multi-color wool locks spun in.  It was then plied with a commercial yarn: a matching high twist mercerized cotton embroidery floss with a lot of shine.

The white/pink skein is one ply of Romney/Texel wool (Manitoba wool) spun from the lock, plied with a commercial pink cotton/viscose yarn with little added bits of silk warp leftovers/thrums.

Then, there's one skein of Border Leicester wool (naturally brown, washed, picked, carded and spun by me) plied with an aqua commercial silk yarn, and a 2 ply Border Leicester skein of yarn that matches this.  

I dropped those 4 skeins of at Ram Wools this week; they're for sale if you're interested.  I think the art yarns would look great with a laceweight yarn or thread, knitted up as scribble lace.  If you buy two matching skeins, it would be enough for a cowl or hat.

When my fiber time is so short, I look at old projects in a new way.  I want to save old things, darn and fix and renovate.  My best guess is that I started the first version of Heart's Ease Socks in 2006, according to this blog post.  My Heart's Ease socks have been worn faithfully most Februaries, right around Valentine's.  However, this year found me pulling the socks out of my drawer permanently.  Knit Picks' Palette yarn is not a super wash wool, and my sock had fulled (nearly felted) through wear.  I wear my clothing very hard, so this isn't a real surprise, but now the socks were hard to pull over my heel to get on.

However, they seem to make mighty fine mitts.  I cut a hole in the heel, picked up stitches on a set of  2.5mm double point needles, and knitted a thumb tip for each sock.  I went back after I knitted the thumbs and reinforced that join between the old heel stitches and the new thumbs.  I haven't gotten a chance to wear them yet, but I think they will be a warm and cheery winter layer.

The reason I haven't worn them yet is that it has been unseasonably warm!  Only around freezing (OC, 32F) and that is shockingly warm for March in Manitoba.  All the snow is melting early, and I hardly need double layer mitts anymore.  What a surprise.

I was extremely lucky in that weather on Tuesday, when my whole day spiraled out of control.  I brought the boys to preschool (kicking and screaming that they were TOO SICK, MOMMY!  I ignored that.  If they are well enough to scream like that?  They're fine.) and dropped them off at school.  There, I discovered there was a parent board meeting, and I felt guilty so I went.  When that ended, I rushed to the grocery store.

I did a big shop, got everything into the car, and sat down to look at the receipt, where I discovered an error.  Rushing in to try to get it fixed?  I locked my keys in the car.  AHHHH!  The professor was in the middle of lecturing to his class, and his car was in the shop, so no help there, he couldn't help me.  I hiked through the yucky dirty melting snow drifts to the boys' preschool.  A teacher (an angel in disguise!) was outside and drove me home.  I dug through another dirty snow drift to find that special hidden key...let myself in, got the spare key, the teacher drove me back to the car in the grocery store parking lot, and I could drive home.  Thank goodness.

Then I unloaded all those groceries, rushed to a physio/physical therapy class, and came back to pick up the boys.  That was it.  The whole day.  Gone.  No work time to speak of.

All I could think of was how lucky I'd been.  It wasn't -40 out, I could walk places.  I found help.  I hadn't been trying to do it with both 4 year olds in tow.  All good.  Not exactly time for writing or spinning or teaching, but given the situation?  It could have been much, much worse...  

creating stuff from scratch

Our October sock KAL is still open to joiners! Visit our group on Ravelry and say which socks you think you'll be doing. The options include Ploughed Acre Knee Socks from Knit Green, Mary Jane Socks from Fiber Gathering, and three other pairs of socks: Molly Baby Socks (an interesting sock knit on straight needles, ideal for toddlers or kids, available both on Ravelry and my website), Heart's Ease Socks, a stranded knitting pattern available on Ravelry, my website, and at a special rate here, and finally, these Polka Dot Socks, available on Ravelry, my website, in Tops and Toes, a book available for sale, and also at Knit Picks online.

Now, on to our regular post...last night, after a busy day, I couldn't sleep. This may have been because of a supposedly decaffeinated cappucino I had after a dinner out, or because my charming Professor had a stuffy nose and was snoring to beat the band. (It happens sometimes to the best of us!)

I got up and wove on my loom in the next room. At first I worried the noise would wake somebody up, but one human and two dogs slumbered on, so the weaving happened for about an hour until I could fall asleep. I was thinking particularly about this...here is a partial quote from a comment, but the sentiment is pretty common:

"I... would love to see more pictures and details. That's something I'm interested in doing as well."

I struggle with this kind of request. On one hand, many of the things I do--teaching, fiber arts (spinning, weaving, knitting, dyeing), writing, etc. --are things that I believe should be within reach for many people. What I mean by that is that people have lots of potential. As a teacher, I believe that I can help people learn, whether I am teaching them to write, or doing a Religious Studies workshop, or teaching them to spin. I believe that for a determined person, many things are possible.

On the other hand, at the same time, we all have gifts. These are things we're good at when compared to other people. Do we deserve to be compensated specially for our gifts? Should we use our gifts in our professional lives? Should our gifts be our livelihood?

Many of the things that might be called my "strengths" are things that are traditionally offered for free or for less than a fair wage. For instance, for many generations, women passed along their fiber art skills to their friends, neighbors and children. These same women were sometimes were natural born teachers. Eventually, women teachers were paid for their work in school houses all over North America...and often earned much less than male school teachers. The same is true, of course, for instruction in religious topics. Even though I have an academic graduate degree in this, many times this sort of knowledge is offered up for free.

Sometimes I'm paid to teach for a short time, and then someone (without this training) concludes that it would be better and easier if they did this for free...and I'm relieved of my "duties."

So, the question becomes--how much information should I offer for free? I think there are several options, using a fiber arts context as an example:
1) Pretend it is all top secret, and offer very little. (this looks stingy..)
2) Write up the instructions for any projects I mention, and try to sell them.
3) Offer all the information for free, with the understanding that not everybody has the same gifts and that somehow good fortune will come to me through this notion.

What is the answer? Well, lately I have been creating finished fiber arts goods for a juried craft sale. It's called the Handmade Holiday Sale (this is from last year's sale) and it will be held in November at the West End Cultural Centre here in Winnipeg. It is run by the Manitoba Craft Council and I applied and competed to be accepted into this juried event. The rugs you've seen me feature on the website will be for sale there.

Anybody could make these rugs. Anybody who:
-sourced mill ends and locally made materials
-used handspun and knew how to spin to produce weaving materials
-hand-dyed materials to the right colors for the rugs in question
-had a floor loom suitable for creating rugs
-could do a simple weave or twill tie up
-could refer to a few books on rug weaving
-could find the time to produce one to two rugs a week whenever possible!

I really believe that anyone with reasonable intelligence and determination can learn most anything. The question for me as a teacher is, at what level do I start explaining things? Do I start with learning to spin, weave or knit? Do I start with "this is the tie up for this particular loom?" I am not sure.

Of course, beyond this is the question I have to face as a freelancer and small business owner. How will I earn a living doing things like this? When is it worthwhile to ask for compensation? What should I give away for free? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this...

More next time on our beautiful new sukkah--Sukkot starts this week!

and the winner is...

Well, this afternoon I popped numbers into the random generator and out popped a name. That person will be getting a signed copy of Fiber Gathering... and the winner is...(drum roll, please....) Diane Mulholland!

I'll be emailing Diane as soon as I finish posting this. Congratulations! Thank you to everyone who "played", I loved your notes! Aside from the whole book signing thing, I should mention that I've noticed that my book (list price $27.99 US) is now selling very affordably on Amazon. That is, somewhere around $12 or less...and I have no control over such things! So, if you were hoping for a copy but didn't win this time, click on the little image on the right of my blog for an affordable purchase.

The only shopping around here today would happen online, as nobody's venturing outdoors much. We're having weather that can be described as "Ithacating." What's that? Well, if you've ever lived in Ithaca, New York, (home to Cornell, where both the professor and I went as undergraduates) you know what I mean.

It's this goop that you can't see out a window. It comes from the sky and hits you on the face, stinging as you walk. It's sometimes snow, sometimes rain, sometimes sleet, and it's just damp and slushy and icky. Apparently a part of our mild January temperatures (roughly between 10-32F) here in Manitoba is a nice 3 day storm with lots of "ithacating." Of course, the temperatures here will drop very soon, which will result in an ice rink, with lots of blowing precipitation, but for now, we're holed up inside....cause there is no telling when the temperature will drop and leave you to skate home...in your car!

Overcast days seem to allow our dogs to nap for longer and longer sessions, which is nice and quiet. Harry in particular seems to be taking the medal in the dog Olympic finals of napping.


Sally dog has been enjoying the dog bed in the professor's office, where she keeps some toys stashed beside her bed. Sadly, just as I walked in to snap a shot of the runner-up in the napping competition, I woke her up and disturbed her chance at Olympic level napping.

(And, if you think we in Canada now have Olympics on the brain, you'd be right! It's day and night excitement around here, waiting for Vancouver 2010. I've written two essays about it and tried to sell them to U.S. publications. No dice. Apparently either those publications already bought all their Olympics writing already--or it's not on their radar the way it is here!)

I've spent my time indoors hard at work. I'm now onto scarf #3 on the endless handspun warp that came with my new loom. With each scarf, I'm learning more, and with something like 9 meters of warp, well, I have at least another scarf to go before I have to figure out warping again. (Whew! It's warping from scratch that scares me...)

Scarf #3 has an interesting weft--a blue tweed handknitting yarn, Rowan DK, I think, interspersed with some very lightweight silk (3 strands wound together) in shades of teal and grays, purchased several years ago on Granville Island at the the silk weaving studio. (No, I wasn't weaving then, but the silk was too beautiful to leave there, so I bought some anyhow!)

On the knitting schedule was a reknit of my Heart's Ease sock pattern. The yarns originally called for in the pattern were, in part, no longer available. The "new" pattern is now available here on Ravelry and will be updated on my website shortly. The only changes to the pattern were very minimal...just a switch from a yarn called "Red" to one called "Serrano" and a new photo. Here it is, just in time for Valentine's Day knitting:

Lastly, heartened to hear from Geek Knitter that apparently the police have been hard at work in Crete. There have been some arrests in these two arson attacks at the synagogue in Hania. There has also been a lot of community and world-wide support to help this small building and congregation back on its feet. It's nice to hear some good news!

I hope you're all enjoying a little quiet and restful winter hibernation, wherever you live. I'm thoroughly enjoying a cloudy, wet, snowy, messy day...inside.

Tops and Toes Blog Tour

Today, as promised, I’m participating in Kara Gott Warner’s blog tour for her new book, Tops and Toes: A Whimsical Collection to Delight Hat and Sock Knitters! I was invited to contribute a pattern to the book, and I’m thrilled to share a photo of Playful Polka Dot Socks with you today, along with this interview.

Kara: Hi Joanne, thanks for inviting me to stop by. I’m excited to learn more about your Playful Polka Dot Socks design. What was it that inspired you?



Joanne: Well, polka dots inspired me! I looked at a variety of sources that indicated that polka dots were in fashion. While I think polka dots are always fun and retro, not everybody can wear an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini! Instead, I tried to figure out what part of the body is ALWAYS flattered by polka dots. Feet, of course!

Kara: I think the choice of Knit Picks Palette yarn was a great choice. Can you tell me a bit more about this yarn, and what makes it a great sock yarn. Is this yarn machine washable?

Joanne: I love that Knit Picks Palette has a wide range of colors. I happened to have some stash in a variety of colors, and the array of shades to be inspiration in itself. I’ve used it before in my Heart's Ease Sock Pattern and it’s worn well in a stranded knitting pattern. That’s why I chose it. Sadly, it isn’t machine washable—a real downside! However, there are many solid colored wool sock yarns that are, so it’s easy to substitute yarns if you’d prefer.

Kara: Why did you choose to design this sock from the cuff-down, rather then from the toe-up?

Joanne: I believe most sock knitters have a formula that works for them as if on automatic pilot. That formula can be knit almost without thinking and fits them well. For me, that formula is based on Priscilla Gibson-Roberts’ book,Simple Socks. While these socks could theoretically be worked toe-up, my habit is to work cuff-down. Fitting the color patterning to look “just so” can be complex when designing so I try to lessen any other designing complications!

Kara: I’m curious, since you’re working with 3 different colors, is it hard to do on something this small? Do you have a trick for working with multiple yarns? I always end up with a tangled mess myself!

Joanne: Many stranded or Fair Isle knitting patterns tend to be on smaller needles. I didn’t find the size to be a problem. In fact, I find knitting with two colors and two hands to be mesmerizing, especially when the movements are so small. Once I get the pattern down, it feels like a meditation, done while knitting!

Here are some things that make it easier. First, although there are three colors here, you only ever knit with two colors in a row. Therefore, there shouldn’t be any jumble of yarns to contend with—just two at a time.

The third color, the one that isn’t being used, can be easily carried up the back of the work. At the beginning of each row, just catch that unused color up by twisting it once on the working yarn, behind the first stitch. The twist will be at the back of the work and won’t show, but the third color will be carried right up to where you’ll need it this way, without any long floats….

…And, talking about floats… I try to design my stranded knitting patterns for socks without long floats so no one’s toes get caught! If this is a concern or you’d like to build in extra warmth, you can work that twist (mentioned above) even with your two working yarns. For instance, imagine you have a section with 4 sts of color A, and color B would normally be a float. Knit 2 sts of color A, twist color B at the back of the work once around color A, and then move on to the next 2 sts. Voilà! No long float, and even warmer tootsies will result…

Kara: with this cuff-down sock you use a Modified 3-Needle Bind-Off. This is an interesting technique. Why did you choose this to bind off the toe?

Joanne: My “formula sock” (mentioned above) uses a 3 Needle bind-off and that’s my habit—I use it in most of my personal sock knitting! However, when I attempted that, I found the bind off line made across the top of the toes was not tidy and neat. I suspect this is because when you knit with two colors, your gauge will be tighter than when knitting with one. The bind-off is in just one color and hence it looked loose and disheveled. I came up with a way to tighten that up through a creative modification.

The short answer is that it solved a technical difficulty between two gauges. The personal answer is that I’d hate to work a whole sock and have everything look beautiful but the bind-off! That would just upset me as a knitter, so I try not to let it happen as a designer!

Kara: How long have you been designing knitwear, and what are your favorite things to design?

Joanne: I’ve probably been designing knitwear since I was a kid. My first published piece was in Interweave Knits in 2002. I don’t really have a favorite! I usually work in the beginning to intermediate range, and I don’t do a lot of lace or polar bulky designs. Otherwise, I think my favorites are the ones that bring me pleasure to knit and wear! It’s hard to tell what will be a favorite until after I’ve designed it, knitted it, and sold it. I also have a fondness for patterns that other knitters love to knit, of course.

Kara: Have you been published in any other books or magazines? Tell me a little about your background, and what brought you to knitting.

Joanne: I’ve had designs published in a variety of places…a short list includes Knit Picks catalog, Interweave Knits Magazine, Spin-Off, Magknits.com, and Lion Brand Yarn Company. I’m most excited about the designs coming out in my books. Fiber Gathering just came out, (HURRAY!) and Knit Green: Twenty Projects for Sustainability, which is coming out this fall. I designed all 20 projects for Knit Green on my own!

I started knitting when I was 4 or 5 and I’ve always enjoyed it. I used to teach – high school, community college, and adult education, but the moving required for my husband’s academic career made it hard to find a new teaching job in each location. I began freelancing part-time in 2002 and took it full-time in 2003. My writing and knitwear designs are a fun part of that freelance career.
--------------------------------------------------
Kara, thanks for inviting me to participate!

(kind readers...was this interesting? Drop me a comment! I’d love to know what you think!)
For the rest of the blog tour schedule, click here: http://www.sheknitsintheloop.com/