the Soxophone Player

This is Cashmara by Fly Designs, in colour Blood Red. 80% Merino 10% Cashmere 10% Nylon.  390 yd/ 4 oz. Washer and Dryer friendly.

Cashmara is a little heavier gauge than some of the fingering weights I knit, and in my notes I have suggested, to myself, a tension of 1/2 turn looser than my standard setting. Deep Red is a pretty intense dye, and I probably could have set the tension a further 1/8 looser, but I started with 1/2 and so that’s how I continued… it was a wee bit stiff to crank at that setting but not too stiff to manage…I did hold my weights down with more force is all.

And by stiff, I don’t mean the feel of the yarn… this stuff is about as sweet as it gets!

This pair is size Medium +, knit with the 72 needle cylinder on the Verdun 47. It has a 1:1 cuff, and an Eye of the Partridge square heel with gussets.

I’ve done quite a bit of tweaking to the original pattern I had adapted. I’m very happy with this now. It still certainly takes longer than a standard CSM heel, but at least the fighting part is over.

When you’re hanging a hem its important to line up your stitches. Otherwise you will get a twist in the hem.

When I do my standard hem top socks you may recall I do 40 rows in mock rib, replace the missing needles, do 2 more rows and then hang row 42 onto row 1.

And you may also recall, that as I begin to knit the second row, I place the beginning tail of yarn under the needles to knit it in as I go, which saves sewing the tail in at the end of the work.

I started this sock, as always, with the scrap yarn and the sock yarn pulled through between Needle Z and Needle A at the red hash mark. (This is Regia Silk, on the Verdun 47 machine, 72 needle cylinder.)

So the first stitch to knit in the sock yarn was on Needle A, as I knit counter clockwise.

To find that first stitch 42 rows later, follow the tail of the scrap yarn. There will be a bit of a hole and then the first stitch of the sock yarn. And if you look carefully at Stitch #1 down against the green scrap yarn, you will see it has  a second bar of the sockyarn angling upwards and to the left of the stitch. That extra bar is from where I laid the tail of the yarn on the needles to knit it in. Looking for that little special configuration makes it very easy to locate the first stitch.

Now I take the bar of the first stitch and hang it (the horizontal bar, not the extra bar that angles up).

The stitch was made by needle A and the bar follows the stitch counter clockwise. So I hang it on the first needle counter clockwise to Needle A.

BUT WAIT! The next needle after A is X. And that needle wasn’t present when I knit the first row because I was in mock rib. I only put needle X in place after row 40.

So I hang the bar of Stitch 1 onto Needle 1, which was the first needle to knit after A.

I hope that didn’t come out more confusing than it is!

Another helpful thing to watch – since I was knitting the mock rib in 3 to one, you can clearly see, in both the sock and the scrap, vertical rows of 3′s. And when you hang the hem you are putting each group of three bars onto the corresponding group of 3 needles. AND the bar on the first of each group of three stitches is much bigger than the other two, since it skipped a needle when being made.

And since I always begin knitting at the right red hash mark, and I always set up my 3:1 mock rib so that there is ONE needle after the hash mark and two before it, then it ALWAYS works out that the first stitch I hang goes onto the third needle after the hash mark. (not the first needle – which made the stitch, and not the second needle, which wasn’t present when I did the mock rib.)

It seems there is more than one turkey on this farm.

Here a small flock of wild turkeys are feasting on haw berries in a nice rich mixture with, um, sheep berries…

(This is a review/revision of a tutorial in my ‘old’ blog.)

I am working on the 54 cylinder in a 3:1 mock rib set up – ie, every 4th needle removed. (But since 4 doesn’t divide evenly into 54, I have two sets of of 4:1 needles – which I  always place between the yellow heel marks and red hash marks.)

My standard knitting has the the yarn in the heel spring at all times – personal preference. I use the spring while I knit up the scrap yarn BUT I  don’t put the sock yarn  in the heel spring until AFTER the first round.

I always, always, always, begin knitting at the right red hash mark ( asterisked in the photos).  And when I set up my needles to do the 3:1 (in 54 and 72 cylinder), I have it so that at the red hash mark one of the three needles is counter clockwise to the red mark, and two are clockwise to it. I do this the same way every time  as it makes finding the first stitch ever so much easier when I go to hang a hem.

(Counting: I don’t use row counters. I count out loud. Since I start at the red hash mark, that where I count….every time the yarn carrier passes the red mark I count. And if I have to DO something, like add needles, hang a hem, start a heel – I stop the yarn carrier at 6 o’clock so that the needles at the red hash mark aren’t engaged in the cams….so if I want to do something after 12 rows, I count to 11 and stop at 6 o’clock. )

I cut the scrap yarn and thread the sock yarn through the yarn carrier AT the red hash mark. I hold both tails together and MAKE SURE that the scrap yarn is under the hook of the needle BEFORE the hash mark, and the sock yarn is under the hook of the needle AFTER the hash mark. I hold the tails while I begin to knit the first few stitches. BUT, as soon as those two needles are almost down, I put a little downward pressure on the tails I am holding.  In fact I usually move my thumb/forefinger up closer to the needles and push down. (If you push down in the very beginning there is a chance the yarn won’t catch the hook. But if you aren’t putting a little downward pressure when the first stitches are completed there is a chance they will slip off the machine.

As I complete the first row, I grab the leading tail of the sock yarn and hold it under the hooks of the needles so that the tail will knit itself in as row 2 begins to knit. Don’t start on the first needle with the tail – if you knit onto the same needle that made the stitch it will drop – start with the tail under the hook of the 2nd needle.

This little exercise accomplishes two things – first, you have no tail to weave in in at the end, and second, it will be very much easier finding the ‘first stitch’ when you go to hang your hem.

When I get near 12 o’clock position (ish) I hold the leading tail into the cylinder, and knit a stitch of two more.

It is at this point that I engage the heel spring on the yarn.

Now I can motor on knitting my mock rib hem top.

You need to knit twice as many rows as you want for your final top. My personal choice is 40 (and then 2 rows once the missing needles are replaced and I switch from mock rib to stockinette).  This is a personal design decision; and a ‘how much yarn have ya got’ too. But I find this size looks good to my eye in proportion to the rest of the sock.

This is Foot Loose, from the Luxury Collection by Diamond Yarns is colour #11

It is 90% Fine Merino, superwash, and 10% Nylon. 175m/50g, 30 stitches and 42 rows/10 cm on 2.75 mm needles. Recommended to machine wash on gentle and dry flat.

Diamond Yarns is a major Canadian distributor of fine yarns from around the world – check the yarn ads in Vogue Knitting and find that about half of them have the same Canadian phone number – that would be Diamond. But they also produce some of their own lines, and Foot Loose is one of them.

What caught my attention with the Foot Loose series is the use of exciting colours, but in more of a matte finish – giving a colorful yet quiet effect.

On the sock machine I found the yarn to knit well at my ‘usual 4 ply tension’. This was a bit of a surprise to me, as with colours this deep I usually have to slack off a quarter turn.

This pair is size Medium, knit with the 54 cylinder on the Legare 400:

The colour behaves quite regularly.

This second pair is size Large, knit with the 72 cylinder on the Verdun 47:

You can see that the colours pool in this setup. Also, I didn’t have quite enough yarn in two 50g balls for the Large pair … but had well enough left over from the Medium pair.

I like the pooling of the sock on the left. The sock on the right can’t make up its mind if it wants to pool or not. (What’s the opposite of  pool?)

This is a nice yarn to work with. It is less lustrous than many merinos, but the matte finish isn’t less soft, that I can tell. I knit a bag of it and don’t recall hitting any knots.

I have, um, a few more bags, and I think what I’ll do with the sizes knit on the 72 cylinder is knit a bunch of the same size, then pair them as looks best – this is often a good route with painted yarns that want to pool.

OK. So I made a ‘real’ pair of socks with the heel/gusset pattern of my last post.  Since I’m still in the learning curve, I made them my size. But confident they would be wearable – if not not flawless – I used some yummy yummy Cashmara by Fly Designs in Stonewash: 80% Merino 10% Cashmere 10% Nylon. I decided to make fairly long legs on this pair to wear when I go cross country skiing with Jesse, or just in my hiking boots that are fairly high and which I use as my ‘goin’ to town’ boots.

I’ve got a 50 row top and 90 rows legs on these size Large socks, and so I was well into a second skein in the knitting.

One of the pluses of this pattern – the sole can be ripped out and re-knit (Lord knows, I did that several times on the first test pair!) so – this may be a good pattern for higher end yarns ;o) The froggin’ can go back to the end of the heel reduction, or even back to where the heel begins.

Do you know what? After taking three years to get the hang of this pattern, I decided I don’t like it.

I do like the gusset. It’s extra work to be sure but I think can be handy for those thicker ankled folks. For me, it is probably more attractive to have as a feature with lower wool content fibers that don’t offer as much give in that area of the foot – like cotton, silk, bamboo and, ugh, acrylic.

But I don’t like the rounded heel. At least I don’t like it the way I’ve done it. I don’t know if you can make out at the red arrow in the above photo, but the reduction in the heel flap goes to far and you get this bulbous thing going on. One idea was just to not reduce down so many rows, so that the flap ends sooner. That might work so I’ll probably give it a try.

That would also address, to some extent, the second thing I don’t like which is having to pickup almost 40 stitches from the edge of the heel flap plus heel short rows all onto 20 needles. That’s a lot of spreading out.

(I don’t discount that I may be still doing something wrong!)

Another idea:

I think this may be my winner.

First – instead of knitting the full insole separately from the sole, I knit only 14 rows of it… enough to make way for my gusset (shown by the red line).

Then I used a Square Heel as I did in the Eye of the Partridge.  But this time is kind of a Half  Partridge…. instead alternating the needles raised in the slip stitch rows,  I raised the same needles each time. But the Full Partridge or straight stockinette would work the same. The other thing different is that I added more rows to the heel flap – the flap is 36 stitches wide (half the cylinder) and in this instance I knit 38 rows (A – B), giving me 19 chain stitches on each side of the heel flap.

Then, instead of short rows, I did the heel strip (12 needles) on the middle third of the heel stitches, and turned the corner the same was as in the Eye of the Partridge, by taking the outer 1/3 needles out of the machine and rehanging those stitches concurrently with knitting the strip (B toC)

Then I put 20 needles back into the cylinder on each side of the heel flap and rehang the stitches from the sides of the heel flap.

Since I had 12 needles for my heel strip – that makes 6 on each side from the centre, and I added 20 needles, so that gives me 26 stitches on each side of the heel – 6 from the heel strip and 20 to rehang. And I have 19 chain stitches on each edge of the heel flap (D to C) so those go 1:1 on the needles – no spreading out stitches to compensate for different number of needles than stitches.

And the bonus – that leaves me one empty needle – so I can M1 (Make 1 stitch) by putting the bar between the last stitch on the heel and the last heel of the insole – which gets rid of  ‘the hole’ at the joint. (at D).

Then I work the gusset rows as in the Heel with Gusset on the previous post. This will work because when I put the 20 needles on each side that gave me 26 needles per side of the heel, and on a 72 needle cylinder the heel or 36 (half) and so each side of the heel ends up as 18 needles. So my gusset rows (K2tog, K1, K2tog, knit to last 4, K2tog, P/U stitch from insole) will be worked to reduce from 26 needles on each side down to 18.

After the gusset reducing rows, two more rounds brings my sole to where my insole left off….so I rehang those stitches and then can motor on with the foot in the round instead of doing the whole separate insole thing.

So far, this is just a test piece – no actual socks tried yet…. but I think this is shaping up to be something I like.

This rather plain looking pair of socks is a milestone for me.

They are an adaptation of a pattern I tried and walked away from several times over the past few years. I simply didn’t get it. There were knitting terms that were unclear to me as a non hand knitter. I’m fairly sure there were bits of instruction missing that may have been taken for granted a knitter would know. And the pattern was written for a 60 stitch sock which I almost never knit, so I was trying to translate things I didn’t know into a size that wasn’t given.

The original pattern was in an issue of the sock machine newsletter published by Bonnie Smola. It was not included on the CD compilation of patterns that I have referred to in the past. Perhaps the pattern was thought to be too difficult ;o)

But I’ve always said that with a sock machine its important to know when to walk away. And to go back later.

The big(gest) difficulty is that on a sock machine you are working with a fixed number of stitches – you can’t just increase a stitch when there is no slot and needle for it.

So the solution?

Knit the insole separately from the sole of the foot. That way you can knit flat using half of the needles – or more, or less – which allows increasing and decreasing, and then join the top and bottom sections together later, just before doing the toe.

In a nutshell:

Knit the top of the sock and leg in whatever standard method is preferred. When coming to the heel, stop with the yarn carrier at 12 o’clock instead of 6 o’clock, and raise out of work all the needles between the red hash marks on the 6 o’clock side of the machine. This leaves the top half of the needles in work, and it is upon these needles we knit the top of the foot (insole). (And don’t get me started about how for umpteen years I thought the insole was the bottom of the foot – I mean its got the word sole right in it!)

In my sample pair, I’m knitting size Large on the 72 cylinder. So I have 36 needles in action on the top of the machine. Knit back and forth to make as many rows as you would normally do for a foot. I’m using my thinner undyed wool/nylon fingering weight, so 80 rows (40 back, 40 forth). I finish on the left side, cut the yarn leaving a tail, tie on scrap yarn and knit 15 or 20 rows, and then run this work right off the needles and just leave it inside the cylinder. And, then remove all the 36 needles just emptied.

Turning my attention now to the heel – on this pair I’ve done the simpler version of the Eye of the Partridge heel in this pattern: Row 1: Sl1, K1 repeat to end of row; Row 2: Sl1, knit to end. Repeat the pair of rows 18 times for 36 row total, and this will give 18 chain stitches on each side of the heel flap. (This A to B in the photo below.)

To turn the heel – I did the Sl1, K5, Ktog, K to end repeat that until the heel flap has been decreased to 10 stitches remaining, ending with the yarn carrier on the left. (This is B to C in the photo below.)

(The tip given by Pat in the comments of Sl1, K5, K2tog gave me a much tidier chain stitch from the Sl1;s)

Then replace 20 needles on the right side, and pick up all the chain stitches from the side edge of the heel turn and the heel flap (So, the sides of A to C in the photo below). There are more than 20 chain stitches, so spread them evenly – this worked out to hang two, skip one, hang two, skip one etc. This little @#@#@$#&*^ piece of information is what took me three @#@#$@*&^ years to figure out.  I was hanging the first 20 chain stitches and then creatively and disastrously trying to integrate the remaining stitches is all manner of ways!

After knitting across, 20 needles are then placed on the left side, and the chain stitches picked up from that side. Ending with this.

So. Now we are working with 50 needles, and we need to reduce that back down to 36 before as we join the top and bottom of the foot together. This decreasing will form the triangular gussets. That process is basically: 1 row of K2tog, knit to end, Pick up one side stitch from insole. (the needle left over from the K2tog is moved to the other side of the cylinder and used to pick up the insole stitch – so on this row, there is no net change in the number of needles.  The next row is a decrease row – it is a K2tog, K1, K2tog, K to last 4 stitches, K2tog, K2, Pick Up Stitch from insole. Now the first K2tog and the last Pick Up stitch in this row are exactly the same as the first row – shifting the needle emptied with the first K2tog to the opposite side to accommodate the stitch picked up from the side of the insole.  The other two K2tog are decreases that shape the gusset – one on each side – and those two needles we remove from the machine. Recall that in the K2tog we move the remaining needles together to close the gap.

Repeat those two rows over and over until there are 37 needles remaining in work – half of the total needles, plus one. We’ve now completed the gussets, and at the same time those Pick Up sitches at the end of each row were starting to tie in the insole.

Now we join the rest of the insole as we finish knitting the foot. To do this we: K2tog, knit to end, Pick Up stitch from the insole. And we do that until the foot is completed. With each pass (remember we’re going back and forth, not round and round) the K2tog empties one needle, which me move to the opposite side and use for the Picked Up stitch. So we have one needle that we shift back and forth on each pass.

When we run out of stitches on the insole, the foot is complete and we have arrived at the scrap yarn that we knit onto the insole just before we ran it off the machine. So now we replace all the missing needles in the cylinder, and rehang the stitches between the good yarn and the scrap yarn onto the needles.

Knit a toe, and yer dun.

My description of work here isn’t  a complete pattern -  just a rough and dirty outline.

I may tweak some of the details. Like the heel turning, where I decreased to 10 stitches (at C) – I’m not sure that shouldn’t be 12 instead of ten.

And I don’t know that I’ll stick with the ‘knit the entire insole’ thing.  80 rows is a lot of back and forth, and a huge amount of K2tog, and Pick Up – each time a stitch being moved is an opportunity to drop it! I think the insole could be done as a partial flap for just as many rows as it takes for the gusset to be finished in the corresponding rows below it, then once you’re back to a total of 72 stitches, knit the rest of the sock in the round. That would shave a good hour off the work.

Here’s a little stitch sequence I’ve been experimenting with on the sock machine:

Sl1, K5, K2tog, K to end (Slip one, Knit 5, Knit 2 together, Knit to end of row.)

You can see that my yarn is on the right side, so I will knit right to left.

To Slip 1, in this case on the first stitch, simply raise the needle out of work, and knit past it.  To the left of the raised needle you can see 5 needles in ordinary position – this is the Knit 5, and then you can see I have lifted the stitch off the 6th needle and placed it onto the 7th needle, making two stitches on the 7th needle. That is K2tog (Knit 2 together.)

But if I leave that empty needle in place, it will pick up a stitch when I knit past it. Or if I raise the needle I’ll get another Slip stitch. So….

I remove the newly emptied needle.

Problem now – when I knit past the empty space I’ll create a mock rib stitch, which in this instance, I don’t want. So….

I move the raised needle, and the 5 that will knit regularly RIGHT OUT of the cylinder, and move them one slot to the left, closing in the space. (You can see there are now 3 empty spaces adjacent to the red hash mark in this photo, while in the previous photo there are only 2 empty slots.)

Note that to do a sequence like this I do all the needle fiddling for the entire row first, then knit the row.

This is probably another one of those things that is more work on a sock machine than on DPN’s.  But what the heck.

If I repeat this pattern going back and forth, I can go from this:

To this:

And all that is but a few steps on the way to this:

Can you see the Slip 1, Knit 5, Knit 2 Together happening?

I dyed up three batches of my own 75/25 fingering weight wool/nylon in three different values of  washfast acid dye Bright Orange.

And here’s the first pair of socks from this monochrome theme:

These Ginger Snaps are size Large, knit with the 72 cylinder on the Verdun 47.