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Sockupied Fall 2015: Electrostatic Lines Knee Socks

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As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve got a bunch of patterns that have come out in the last four weeks.  If you’ve been paying attention to my design page on Ravelry (you know you can follow the page on Ravelry, right?), my published patterns page jumped from 35 patterns to 45 – a full ten (TEN!) patterns released this last week.  It’s also part of the reason I was sooo busy the beginning of this year.  Today I want to take the time to highlight Electrostatic Lines, featured in Sockupied’s Fall 2015 issue.  Electrostatic Lines is a pair of stranded knit knee socks with a fun twist to make the calf fit you perfectly!

I’ve loved designing for Sockupied.  They’re one of the smaller magazines out of Interweave, but I love the focus on quality patterns, and the editor’s commitment to bringing really great sock articles forward.

Sockupied Fall 2015

Credit: Interweave/Harper Point Photography

In this issue, Electrostatic Lines are on the cover (my fourth pair on a Sockupied Cover!) – and I think these are one of my favorite pairs of socks I’ve ever designed.

Credit: Interweave/Harper Point Photography

I was working on these socks nearly a year ago today.  I knew these were going to be a particularly difficult pair of socks – not only did I have to finish them and Karner Butterfly in about 4 weeks, but knee socks are a haul.  When you get past the heel, you’re barely halfway done.  But I loved sitting on the front porch of our house in the mornings and afternoons and just steadily churning through the rows.  I love how there’s a bit of interest at the toe, the mini-gusset followed by the short row heel, and then the fun joy of working stranded knitting up the leg.  Knee socks are a commitment – but they’re worth it.

Steadily working up the leg

This was one of my first projects using ChiaoGoo’s Red Lace Needles, and I was in the process of falling in love, leaving my Addi’s in the dust.

Trying socks on as you go – toe up all the way!

There are so many things I’m proud of in this pattern.  I love that you can try these socks on as you go, to make sure that the calf fits just as it should.  The stranded knitting for the leg is written in such a way that increases can be added or subtracted as needed, so the pattern will fit perfectly for your calf.

And quite simply, I fell in love with this color combination: nearly a perfect, yet counter-intuitive combo for fall.  Hedgehog Fiber’s Rusty Nail and Graphite work lovely together.  They just seam to glow, especially in the sunlight.

You can check out more details about my sample pair of Electrostatic Lines on Ravelry, which includes the time information for this particular pair of socks.

Rusty Nail seems to glow

Electrostatic Lines is available from Sockupied, along with a bunch of other quality patterns.  Buy your copy here!

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Last night we opened up the house and turned off the air conditioning.  I left the fan on, and halfway through the night I awoke to turn the fan off; the air circulating through the house was cool enough.  In the wee hours of the morning I woke up again to pull the fleece blanket out over the sheet.  This morning, as I climbed on my bike, I wore long workout pants and a sweatshirt.

Tomorrow the morning will be warmer, and I doubt I’ll need the sweatshirt.  By Wednesday we’ll probably close up the house as the humidity and heat climbs.  But it’s happened – I’ve seen my first glimpse of Fall through the haze of summer.

I’ve talked before how I’ve always been an Autumn Girl.  The smell of hot cider and the curve of a pumpkin reside someplace to the left of my heart.  Halloween is anticipated with the same excitement of a birthday.

Maybe it has something to do with the weather cooling and the hand-knits coming out.  Maybe it has something to do with the start of school, the crisp feel of unlined paper, new school supplies, and a potential for learning.

This upcoming Fall has a special highlight – I’m teaching at Rhinebeck.  There’s so much to do before the date!  I’m working on class samples, and trying to squeeze in the time to make a Rhinebeck Sweater (
which, unfortunately is looking less and less likely).

Finish This: One of the Classes I’m teaching at Rhinebeck

I’m really excited because I’ve been dreaming of teaching at Rhinebeck for several years.  This is where you come in – if you’ve been thinking about taking a class, and haven’t decided yet – you really should!  Many of the classes I teach need to meet minimum enrollments – so if you wait unti
l the last minute you might miss out.  New York in the fall is simply beautiful, and many people I know are making a trip out of going to Rhinebeck, and taking some time to enjoy the Fall foliage!

You can signup here!

https://www.tinkingturtle.com/2014/08/last-night-we-opened-up-house-and/

4 Quick Exercises to Draw Inspiration From Nature

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Credit: Chimney Corners Camp

I’ve mentioned before that Fall is my favorite season.  The apartment smells like apples for the third week in a row (the applesauce is done, the apple butter and apple pie filling. We’ve moved on to dry apples).  I’ve pulled out my comfy sweatshirts and my slippers.  I’ve moved away from socks (my go-to summer knitting) to a snugly rug for in front of my bathroom.  And every day as I go for a walk or travel to and fro, I stop and look at the leaves to see the color gradually change (I can’t help feel competitive; the camp where I grew up is already in a glory of color).

For me, I see echos of nature wherever I go, and they come to roost in the back of my brain, to slip out weeks or months later when a design call has need.  But sometimes it’s fun to do different things to get yourself inspired about nature.  Below is a list of different exercises I sometimes use when working on a design call.

  1. Capturing lines: go for a walk with a camera or sketchbook.  Get really close to things and
    by PictureWendy

    sketch them.  Use only the most basic lines.  I love looking at butterfly wings, veins in leaves, whorls in seashells or patterns in broccoli.  Could you replicate those patterns or lines with stitches?

  2. Unexpected color: I love going to the farmer’s market and finding unexpected color combinations.  Go to the zoo or hop on pinterest.  What colors does nature throw together that are unexpected or stunning?  Try pairing green with practically anything.  Flowers in all colors pair well with green. Try to replicate that in your own colorwork.
  3. Touchable texture: there are so many different textures you can encounter in the great big world!  Find something nubby, bumpy or three-dimensional.  How would you capture that in knit or crochet?  What would you do?
    by klugi
  4. Fractals or repeating patterns: I love going on pinterest and finding cool or interesting patterns.  There are so many repeating patterns in the water, in the air, or represented in flowers.  Could you take that pattern and put it on a hat, shawl or other creation?  What about the radiating lines of a palm leaf – would you capture that in intarsia, stranded knitting, or Irish Crochet? What about the interwoven patterns of exposed roots or rock – is that cablework, knotwork, or something else entirely?
Looking for more ways to get inspired?  Two of my favorite books are The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and the short and sweet Design Sources for Pattern by Jan Messent.

Do you know why October is my very favorite Month?

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I’ve always been a fall girl, a northern girl, a Yankee.  My favorite fruit is the apple, my favorite tree the sugar maple, and I live for fall foliage.  I like when the weather turns, the nights turn cool, and you put the extra blankets on your bed.  I love when school starts: new backpacks and notepaper and new pens.

October is when Halloween happens: perhaps the best holiday in the US calendar, where you can anything you want to be and you aren’t teased for it.  I love crunching on roasted pumpkin seeds and eating all the types of gourds that come into season now: spaghetti squash, butternut, pumpkin, yum!

Fall is when I pull out my hand knit or crochet socks, sweaters and blankets, and get to cuddle into them.

I start thinking about October sometime at the end of August, and spend most of September trying to persuade people it’s almost October.

This last weekend we went apple picking – already the second venture out of the season.  The first week we spent most of the time making apple sauce, this week we are making apple butter.

an apple, shiny on the tree
This is the fifth fall that we’ve been processing apples (I’ve been doing it many years before then, with my family), and we’ve got it down to a science.  Apples are merely quartered and put into the pot whole, and boiled.  When we run the soft apples through the food mill, the stems, woody bits, and seeds are worked out.

For the apples we dry in the dehydrator we have this nifty machine, pictured above.  Sometimes I’ll just do an extra few apples because it’s so much fun to crank it. 

When we are really going at the applesauce making, we have all four burners going, and nearly every big stockpot in the house.  Pictured above, we have the three burners boiling the apples and the one burner boiling the already canned applesauce.  It’s a good thing the weather is turning cool, because the kitchen gets quite hot!
For me, the smell of apples cooking, and the smell of allspice, cloves and cinnamon altogether embodies fall.
Do you love Fall? Do you have some favorite fall traditions?  I’d love to hear about it on twitter or facebook.

Quilting Update

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It’s been a while since I last talked about Michael’s Train Quilt, aside from an odd mention here or there.  I’ve been in the process of machine quilting it, which turned out to be more of a project than I anticipated.  I thought I was going to freeform quilt it, but it became very clear very early on that it wasn’t going to work well.  So then, after much deliberation, I ended up basting it with spray-on basting, pinning it in places, and just running random lines across the quilt.  It looked really bad when I first started.  The more lines I get going across it, the better it is starting to look.  I’m hoping I might get the quilting done this weekend.

By Lucy Knisley

Then I can think about doing the binding, god help me.

The point is, I’m close.  Very close.

And it got me thinking.  While I don’t think I really like sewing or quilting as a hobby, and while there is a lot to learn from sewing a garment that can apply to knitting – I’m thinking about doing another quilt.

Bear with me.  I’ve always really liked apple posters that show all the different varieties of apples.  Like this, this or this.  Then, earlier this week I saw a picture by Lucy Knisley, pictured at right.

Now let me say – I think the best art inspires you yourself.  It might mean it creates some strong emotion in you, but it also might just mean that it speaks to you and inspires you yourself.  This is what happened to me.

And I thought to myself, “That’s nice.”  Then, “She got the Red Delicious wrong.  And I prefer calling a Crispin and Mutzu.  I can’t believe she didn’t include Pink Lady or Winesap or Johnathan.”

Which just shows you how much of an apple snob I am.  But then I thought – I wish I could paint like that.  I’d make a better poster.  And then I realized that it’d make the perfect little/not so little quilt.  I could take white or cream squares, draw out the apples.  Color them with crayon, iron them, and then embroider on them.  It’d be so cool.  And then I could make it into a quilt.

So I’m thinking I gotta get my apple mojo going.

What apples would you have to include on an apple quilt?

We Made out Like Bandits, I Tell ‘Ya

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Michael and I belong to a CSA, Spiral Path, which we pick up once a week from the Silver Spring Farmer’s Market.  Every once and a while Spiral Path will have an open farm day for its members.  It’s a cross between a harvest festival and a good backyard party, and we’ve been wanting to go for a while.  The only drawback is that the farm is 3 hrs away in PA.

However, this last weekend Michael and I had Ray visiting (who has a car that gets double the miles to the gallon that our car does). Coincidentally, there was an open farm day.  We decided to make a day of it, and got up REALLY early (before the sun rose) and drove to Spiral Path.

The drive was well worth it.  There was a fabulous pot-luck, tours of the farm, heyrides and other wonderful events.  Michael and I hadn’t quite realized how big Spiral Path is – they service 2250 members.  Just for perspective, most CSA’s have around 200 members.  Spiral Path is huge, but still very down to earth.  All the growing they do is organic, and you can see the values they hold in every choice they made about how the food is grown and prepared for shipment.  Michael and I feel very passionately about supporting efforts like this, and it’s great to know that we not only are getting great value for our food, but that it is going to a solid business model.

The most lovely part of the open farm day is the goodies that you get for free.  Spiral Path has a chunk of produce that it grows that for whatever reason isn’t considered sell-able – either it has blemishes, is too small, or has something else wrong with it.  Normally they donate the “reject food” to the local food shelter, but when they have the open farm days, they make this extra produce available to the members for free.

Our bounty from Spiral Path (the veggies) and Rock Hill (the apples)

Take a look at our haul:

We took home: 2 pumpkins, 2 butternut squash, 2 spaghetti squash, yellow squash, green beans, eggplant, summer squash, and a whole bunch of peppers, of various sweet and spicy flavors.

Finally, Spiral Path also had a herb garden where members could cut their own herbs.  We brought home mint, sage, and lots and lots of basil (for making pesto).

The event ended at 3, and by that time I was pretty tuckered out.  But we weren’t done yet.  On the way home, we stopped by Rock Hill Orchard, and picked up some Empire and Jonathan apples.  Just because it’s the beginning of fall, and that’s what you got to do.  Go apple picking.

First Spring in Metro DC (Or, An Exuse to Post a Bunch of Pictures)

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2010 October and November 030Yarnies,

April 042As you might have gathered by now, I’m a Northerner at heart.  Or as Boyfriend would say, a Yankee.  I grew up always looking forward to Fall.  It’s when school started, and I loved school.  I loved the leaves turning color, I loved the hot summers and the smell of sticky popsicles and suntan lotion fading to the crisp Fall air with the hint of woodfires.  To me, Fall was characterized by going hot cider doughnuts, apple picking, cider in my thermos instead of milk on Fridays, and making leaf crowns.  Fall is prime crafting time.  I could never understand why people might love Spring instead of Fall.

205And then I met the Boyfriend, who couldn’t imagine me liking Fall instead of Spring.  Spring had always been mud for me.  Mud, and weather that was not quite Winter but not really early Summer either.  My first Spring in North Carolina in 2006 was a revelation.

But let me tell you.  North Carolina has nothing on DC when it comes to Spring.  I’ve never seen so many flowering trees in my LIFE.
March 173
201I’ve been taking pictures like crazy, because if I tried to tell anyone back north about this, they’d fall off their seats laughing.  There’s been times where our few flowering trees haven’t started until the beginning of Summer.  Never mind in April.  April we’re still sometimes getting snow.

Yarnies, if you’ve never been to DC in the Spring, you have to come.

Maybe the Boyfriend has something.  I’m not saying I like Spring more than Fall, but maybe, just maybe, I can understand why some people like Spring better than  Fall.

What’s your favorite season?

New Classes for this Fall

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Fall is upon us, and with all this cool weather coming it’s the perfect time to get back into knitting or crochet. If you live in the Metro DC area, come check out these great new classes at The Yarn Spot. In the next upcoming days I’ll give you some sneak peaks at the different projects we’ll be working on!

Crochet with Jennifer Beginning Crochet IA great introduction to Crochet!
Chain, single crochet, double crochet and more. Learn how to make a coaster and a small purse.
Date: Wednesday, Oct. 13 & 20
Time: 6:30-8 PM
Cost: $60
RSVP by: Monday, Oct. 11
Class Size: 3-8 people
Register NOW!
Beginning Crochet IIWhere we expand our skills.
Expand your skills with basic lacework, different needle sizes and basic finishing techniques. Make some lovely lacework jewelry and a narrow headband.
Date: Wednesday, Nov. 10 & 17
Time: 6:30-8 PM
Cost: $60
RSVP by: Monday, Nov. 8
Class Size: 3-8 people
Register NOW!

Intermediate Crochet I
A great way to expand our skills! Must know how to single crochet, double crochet, chain and slip stitch. Learn how to Fillet Crochet and learn Foundation Crochet. Make a project bag to hold your current designs!
Date: Wednesday, Dec. 1 & 8
Time: 6:30-8 PM
Cost: $60
RSVP by: Monday, Nov. 29
Class Size: 3-8 people
Register NOW!

Intermediate Crochet II
Must know how to single crochet, double crochet, chain and slip stitch. Learn how to make Picots, Bobbles, and crochet to the front and back. Make a pillow sham to show off your skills!
Date: Wednesday, Dec. 15 & 22
Time: 6:30-8 PM
Cost: $60
RSVP by: Monday, Dec 13
Class Size: 3-8 people
Register NOW!

Toe Up Socks with Jennifer
Date: Tuesday, Nov. 2, 9, & 16
Time: 6:30-8 PM
Cost: $90
RSVP by: Sunday, Nov 31
Class Size: 3-6 people
Register NOW!

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