2015 in Retrospect

It seemed appropriate to take time this morning to review my blog for the last year and do a wee bit of counting. By my count there were approximately 35 new knitting projects of my own shared in 2015. I also shared 3 projects done by knit buddies and talked about 3 online or in-person classes I took. There were news articles about a lace knit English garden fence, a sheep that avoided shearing for a half dozen years and a woman who knit while waiting to be freed from a loo. You got book reviews and more spinning information than perhaps you needed. Plus there was plenty of family and friends updates.

In many ways 2015 was a great year, but losing Dad right before Xmas impacts my view, I am afraid. In all other ways 2015 included lots of travel, time with family and friends and plenty of time for knitting and now spinning creativity. And I still think I am one of the luckiest people in the world to be living my current life.

As for my socks, they will be fraternal twins. Although my preference would be an exactly matching pair, these socks due to their history and lack of yarn will remain as they are. There is not enough yarn to manipulate them to be exact and this pair will remain precious to me because they were started before Dad died and finished after his passing.

I cannot wait to see what 2016 brings!

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Anatomy of a Sock

I've been knitting socks for a relatively short time. One of the disconcerting things for me as I started following patterns for socks is the pattern designer assumes the knitter (in this case that would be me) knows all the parts of a sock. So I thought I'd devote a post to improve my own knowledge about the anatomy of a sock and maybe some of you will learn something about the humble yet necessary sock as well. Here's the names of the parts of the foot as I know them. #49 ankle, #50 heel, #51, instep, #52 ball, #53 big toe, #54 toe, #55 little toe, #56 toenail. There are some parts more important for this discussion; first the heel of a foot is generally used to refer to the entire C-shape from the ankle to the instep. Speaking of the instep, it refers to that curve near the bottom of the foot. And what seems to be missing in the design above is the sole which generally refers to the bottom of the foot in total or plantar aspect in more technical terms...

Gosling's Meme and Knitting

What is a meme, you may first ask? Well Dr. Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, came up with the idea in the late 1970's and stated something like: a meme is to a society what a gene is to a human. Both are an element or unit that can be replicated or passed from one individual to another. During the Internet age memes can be easily shared, replicated or otherwise passed on to another. Recent examples can be found on Gawker . Memes can include piano playing cats, a honey badger, the Call Me Maybe phenomenon and so on. The political campaign in the U.S. helped fuel memes using some of the most unusual statements like, "binders of women" and "you didn't build that." A few memes have staying power but most have a relatively short life span. Gosling's meme related to knitting has been around for some time; so when I again saw another post about him recently, it was time to figure out the origin. Ryan Gosling is a Canadian actor born in Onta...

Yarn Usage II: Crochet vs. Knit

All four swatches were made. Each is 6.25" or 15.875 cm square; each prepared with the same sized yarn and needles or hook. It took 25 stitches to get the appropriate width for the knit swatches and only 20 stitches for both of the crocheted squares. That already says something, but I'll get to it in a minute. (Don't know what I'm talking about here? Check out this post first.) Unfortunately, you'll just have to trust me that four swatches were prepared and that they were all the same size. In the excitement to get to measuring and weighing of the swatches, no photographic evidence was taken. Luckily for me the results of this research doesn't have to be reviewed by a jury of my peer. This blog post will be the sum and total of where this information is published. The remains of my four swatches What can be shared, however, are the balls of yarn rewound after the weighing and measuring was completed. You will note the size ...

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