Linkety-link, part 8

This week’s regularly scheduled post isn’t going to happen (due to a confluence of personal events), so it’s a good thing I have a bunch of links saved up!

Multicraftual:

• Standard foot measurement information for sock makers. It’s written for knitters, but I see no reason why crocheters or nalbinders couldn’t make good use of it.

Knitting:

• Making frogging back to a previous row easier.

Crochet:

• Three crochet foundation stitches – I need to try all three! There’s at least one there I haven’t tried yet; I wonder how it would do as a knitting cast-on. From Vashti Braha, who is amazing.
• Tunisian Crochet Lace: New Habits Another Vashti post, about how Tunisian crochet doesn’t need to be worked densely. Loosen up!
  Some Tunisian Lace stitches. Not from Vashti, for a change.
• A basic guide to Bosnian crochet, which is a subset of slip-stitch crochet.
• The two color spiral.

Until next week!

Redesigning

It figures. I get my sock pattern all written up and partially edited, when I discover that there might be a better way to do the most difficult part. I think it would not only improve the appearance but be easier to knit.

I’m working up a quarter-scale version of the sock, and it’s looking promising!

Fortunately, I can use the experience from writing up the first version to improve the write-up on the new one.

I still have hopes of getting this done by Sock Summit!

Translation from sock to pattern

This last month has taught me that translating my designs into written patterns is hard work.

Fortunately, I have friends who are or will be acting as beta testers. One of them has gotten a good start on the whole thing, and has been doing a good job of knitting what I wrote, not what I meant to write. She’s also told me when my instructions are flat-out confusing. Very helpful!

I’m also glad that I will be taking a class on designing and writing sock patterns at Sock Summit–I hope it will help me learn the language.

Part of my problem is that I learned sock basics eight years ago, and haven’t used written patterns since. Furthermore, this particular sock has a very unusual construction, and so converting the abbreviated summary in my head (which partly uses a three-dimensional understanding of the structure, only not a visualization*, instead of verbal description) into something that someone else can follow is extra tricky.

I think I have a decent draft of the trickiest bit, but we’ll see what she makes of it!

*This is very hard to describe. When I “visualize” things, I often don’t “see” them in my mind. I have a kind of kinetic feel for spatial relationships instead.

Sock Design Progress

Well, I finished one sock of this pair, and will be working on writing up the pattern in segments as I knit the second. I’m finding that the bottleneck with patterns is the actual writing. I’ve found some test knitters, and will be giving them instructions as each part is written; I hope this will make a difference in my actually finishing writing the pattern.

I also need to do the same with the Winter Solstice socks I posted about before.

Hard work!

Design setback

I was just about to post that I was making really good progress on one of my sock designs and that I’d finished half a sock, when I realized that I had half again more stitches than I should on the instep. Then I realized why, sighed, and ripped back most of the way. Fortunately, I had used a lifeline right before the critical row, and so it wasn’t hard to pick up the stitches again.

Onward!

Stretched thin?

I’m now working on four different pairs of socks, which might be a mistake, or might not. We shall see. I’m also spinning up some lovely, dark brown Romney locks. I’m planning on making four-strand, cabled sock yarn.

Twisty brain

All of a sudden I found myself doubting how this sock that I’m knitting will come out. I stopped and thought about the oddities involved, did some math, and still felt dubious.

Then I thought, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” and decided to forge ahead with my original plans. If I have to frog some knitting and start over a bit, well, that’s part of designing!

Design progress

I’m pleased to say that my designing enthusiasm is continuing – now if only I can actually get myself to write things up!

I’m about a third of the way through one full-size sock from one design and have knitted up most of a prototype of the second. (The prototype involves just knitting a small version of the portion of the sock that has the unusual construction.)

A while ago I also started to write up the pattern for some other finished socks, and I need to sit down and finish them. It’s very easy to see what the bottleneck is!

These are the socks that I’ve started writing up; it’s a more conventional pattern, which I call Winter Solstice:

Getting Going!

There’s two things I’ve been meaning to do:

1. Get started on using this blog.
2. Actually try knitting and writing up the patterns for some sock designs I have in my head.

With Sock Summit coming up, I’m feeling more inspired. I don’t yet know if I will be able to afford to go; however, there’s no reason not to work on the socks in any case.