ben told me a long time ago that his sisters would make fun of him for wearing socks with his birks. they weren't winning any prizes for fashion themselves, and ben is fucking adorable, so for the first night of hanukkah, he got the socks i have been working on for him - with a nice barbara walker chart up the back, to show off those ankles.

i've mentioned the queen kahuna sock book before. and i hadn't picked it up in a long time, and getting back into her mind was... hard. honestly, it's like having rain man teach you to make socks. but once you've got it - it's great. ben proclaims that these are the best-fitting socks he's ever owned.

photo's a tad blurry but i think it captures the blurriness of a friday evening with xmas lights and two menorahs going, dog and cats being terrorized by a jumping, musical wind-up dreidel, and ben in the kitchen making holiday cookies and matzoh ball soup!

we often have stacks of extra knitting tarot cards -- cards that might have been too inky or too light in places -- lying around. ben learned to make an accordion-fold book insert in a book about japanese bookbinding, and, using two KT cards as front and back "covers", we made some little ledgers.

this one features the moon, who, in the KT, is looking at a mysterious pair of socks. so that the socks i make are not too mysterious, i am using this little book to write down the measurements of people for whom i might knit socks. i can keep all the measurements on hand, as well as preferences for cotton versus wool, how tight a fit is preferred, how tall a sock, stripes or not, stuff like that. this way, i have all the info -- and nobody is clued into getting a pair of socks as a gift by me asking them their measurements and preferences!

i finished them. i LOVE them. most comfortable handknit socks i ever made, and i mean under a shoe! and that's with, remember, NO TOE SHAPING because i screwed up. if they are this good with NO toe shaping, imagine how great the next pair will be!!

and this heel. this replacable heel. i love it. that is not to say that i'll never knit a gusseted heel again but gosh -- why do it? this is the BEST heel -- and if you are doing a pattern or colorwork on your socks, using a replacable heel means you don't have to think at ALL about how to expand your pattern to incorporate increases or anything.

and truly, that invisible toe cast-on is the best. i may use it for anything i knit in the round that is eventually meant to be "two-sided". i'm just so pleased with the whole endeavor.

i won some sock yarn on ebay. it is nylon and acrylic, and i hope it doesn't make my feet sweaty and stinky. i like wool. but i don't like the self-patterning stuff all that much and god, that is almost all that is out there on ebay. where are the solid colors? all i wanted to do was practice the techniques in the queen kahuna book.

i purchased through a secondary market, thereby limiting (in theory) the numbing choices available at many stores. it made me feel more focused. i was asking myself:

did i want socks in self-striping army camo colors BEFORE knowing the yarn existed?

did i want socks IN SPITE OF the possibility of making them in self-striping army camo colors?

my feelings came in somewhere between the first two choices, even though i was not pleased with the actual fiber makeup. the auction ended around five pm -- i like to lurk in those auctions that end during nine-to-five "drive time". i figure at least some of my competition is on the roads. i won my sock yarn, for slightly less than it cost to have it shipped priority mail. that was cool.

i really like the queen's book. yes, it has very DIY production values. but it is FULL of information. it's not just that you aren't getting pretty margins -- you aren't getting margins at ALL. the book is wall to wall writing. sometimes it rambles towards the familiar, even the disjointed -- kind of like the mother of michael jackson's accuser. it reminds me, more than anything, this book, of the label on a bottle of dr. bronner's castile soap.

it is, though, full of information. sometimes difficult-to-follow information. it is a good thing to have a mate or two using the book as well, to screech your confusion at. i know that doesn't sound like much of an endorsement for the book, but i do recommend it. it may not look like the still photographers for martha stewart living put it together, nor will it be on the shelves of barnes and noble along with carefree roadtrip girlfriends' hip-to-knit bitchbible or whatever great new knitting book is killing forests this week, and yes, it has a lot of typos and some confounding language. (yes, i AM giving it a thumbs-up. this is what a thumbs-up looks like in this case.)

after quite a few false starts i succeeded with an invisible cast-on for toes that i really, really liked. somewhere in the instructions, though, i had used a formula to get the number of stitches to make for this particular cast-on that was equal to the number of stitches i'd need on the foot, total. so no increases, and a strange, square toe. i realize this is not what queen kahuna was suggesting, but i started to think it'd be okay. i decided i would add in a "peasant" or "replacable" heel, since i was going with a sort of unrounded theme. i am calling these my "army robot socks". the heels are probably going to be a different color -- possibly a yarn with completely different washing needs than the camo yarn -- but since they already have robot toes i'm throwing caution to the wind.

once i got the cast-on -- reading and re-reading and conferring with a buddy -- i had to agree it was the best one ever. better than the anna zilboorg "figure 8" cast-on, even, which i have always liked. there are so MANY cast-ons in this book -- as well as different ways to increase toes, different ways to make heels, up, down, backwards and forwards -- it's engrossing reading.

speaking of reading -- y'all, walden is hard. it's not hot-knife-through-butter reading. i know the guy was trying to simplify his life but it's a kind of rambling, cluttery book. i myself am familiar with feeling resentful towards those who hinder my solitude at times, but thoreau felt that way about yeast. he's a strange read. so is queen kahuna.

oh so verklempt.

do you know that yesterday, in the mail, i received socks -- handmade socks? beautiful funkysturdy handknit socks? (seen here to great advantage on the mean streets of philly in front of the handwork of the infamous toynbee tiler).

funny how this never occured to me -- how much i would enjoy and appreciate things made by other knitters. it is not, i see, simply a matter of "i could do it myself, so why would i want someone else to?" i love these. because of who made them for me. because they are in a weird colorway that i can't remember the name of but it sounded like some crazy old jethro tull b-side ("faldul ringel" or something). because...

because she has put hints about when she would like her knitting tarot deck to be completed, in duplicate stitch, directly onto my achilles' heels.

i see.

no no, i'm not going to interpret this as a hint; i'm going to interpret this to mean that these are the official knitting tarot socks for this year -- and that NEXT year, when i am still printing, i will get more! bwahaha ha ha ha!

i love these. thank you, friend.

(it is not necessary to make or purchase gifts for me to square oneself a place in line for the knitting tarot.)

it was sometime last spring or early summer that tish sent me the call for manuscripts she had found, for short stories about philadelphia and by philadelphia writers, for an upcoming anthology. so i submitted one, and told tish if they chose my story, i would make her a pair of socks.

lots to say about these socks. everything but the red is koigu. i know how much people love koigu, and i get it. i personally shy away from thinner yarns, or yarns that look very plied. however. if you've gotta. or you wanna. this stuff is nice enough that sometimes you stop knitting and just look at the strand in front of you.

again, the red is something else softer and fatter, but i threw the label away. the colors here -- i have been in love from the very start.

tish is a big woman. the socks are made to fit her -- and are also more of what i'd call "hostess socks", like you'd call something "hostess pajamas" -- for wearing in the house when receiving casual, intimate guests and feeling lovely. they are probably not gonna work well under a shoe -- kinda thick -- and i tried to incorporate a turkish sock chart and a "western" heel, while also knitting from the toe up. i don't like patterns that require picking up stitches along a heel flap. i muddled through that with these. the sock with the red in the heel is, in that area, a little larger than the other sock -- to accommodate some scarring on tish's ankle, from when she got her feet caught between rocks while crossing a river in india, to get to her guru. back in the day.

the milagra charms were a gift to me, and i am happy to be able to pass a few of them on. (i did keep some favorites.) i did a picot-edge at the top of the socks, and there you go.


as for the book project, i believe it is due out this summer -- i'm looking in the mail for hardcopy galleys now. i am proud to be a part of a project that links me in this way to the city of philadelphia, a city that i absolutely adore. since i was a teenager here, i would sometimes get "crushes" on certain streets or intersections, and go way out of my way to walk there. i still do it. and ended up with a partner in life who feels the same way. there are evenings we just drive or walk around town, visiting favorite corners, trees, or doorways. this is the city of my heart -- and of edmund bacon, le cabaret mélange, and a truly dramatic and dynamic city council. it is the city where you can sometimes see randall "tex" cobb putting ointment on his feet in liberty one, or trying to flag down cars to give him a jump outside superfresh at tenth and south. it is an awesome city.

and i will be proud to have a short story associated with a project in this city's name! but, wouldn't have known about it at all, without tish out in san francisco to give me the tip. thank you tish! i hope they are what you wanted. (and i know you wanted to be "surprised" and might stumble across this entry before your socks arrive, but even if you do, i bet you're still surprised.)

christmas present exchanges with my friend lisa are well-documented on this blog. this year lisa not only sent the requisite treats (both human and dog) from her bakery, but some plant cuttings and rhizomes, and a book about... footwear.

as you see -- important issues are covered within.

i very much like the japanese "tabi"-style socks, and plan to make a pair.







... and i like the sexy babalonian footwear.






that's not all lisa gave me. also known for her literary gifts of many kinds, she sent an old, old copy of esquire, that featured not only ronald reagan modelling camelhair coats...





but this.

there are few among you incapable of imagining, i am sure, my unbridled joy on the verge of sickness upon receiving this item.

may you all receive gifts this year that get you so excited you nearly throw up.

because they're practical.

the sweater heretofore referred to as the "money pit" -- previously seen only at it's very beginnings -- is on hold this week while more vittadini "fiora" is scavenged. so instead i made a pair of fuzzy feet. that's a great pattern -- it was a great pattern when i made it a few years ago and it still is, and its author's kitchener stitch instructions are also very good.

here are the slippers before...



and here they are after. i pinked a couple of dishtowels in the felting process, but so what.




i've had the mah-jongg buttons for some years now, just sitting around. two bam! five crak! pong! kong! etc.

i walked around in these this morning and warm is not even the word. they heat you up considerably.

poor neglected little knitting blog! i actually did more knitting this past week than i did either writing or printing. i am starting to see a pattern where one or two of these emerges in a strong lead over the remaining, as a theme for the week. it keeps the roses in your cheeks, that kind of unpredictability.

i originally didn't consider this entirely bloggable, but now i see it in action and would be sad to have ignored it. it is a little scarf that i knitted from the same sock yarn as made the straithairn socks. it isn't as "deep" as a normal babushka, and sorta stands up on my head, but it's purpose is for wearing during printing; one gets warm, and i didn't want my head covered, i just wanted all my hair -- which these days, it takes a forklift to move -- held back. one hair can mess up a letterpress job in a big way. you want to keep 'em out of the press, for sure.

we did a lot of printing yesterday. we are doing small items lately, notecards and tags and such. we just did a "big" (for us) typesetting job -- a gift for my mom -- and will be working on some other projects involving more typesetting after this week, when our new 18 point baskerville arrives. yesterday, just playing around with little cuts and compositions, we worked with black paper and silver ink -- which was mezmerizing. not much to show yet because we haven't scanned much, but a webpage devoted to the press will be up by fall. and of course, by fall, i think the knitting tarot will be possibly the only thing we are working on with relation to the press.

so you see, this "cap" is more like the type seen on waitresses in tea houses in england. it would be an act of mortification to wear it in public. but now the sight of it on my head -- like the smell of naturewash and ink -- reminds me of good stuff. mmmmm, i like good stuff.

having recently made the statement that i'll be focusing my knitting energies on larger projects, you see i have posted twice consecutively about projects that could fit in your pocket. well. but what about what you don't know? what aren't you seeing? think about it...

i don't often post links to outside sites, but for heaven's sake. there's one named albertine. (i take this as a possibility that this guy has read proust, and i am always on the lookout for that.) and they are the way i will recycle my own handknit socks when the time comes to do so.

well, there's no question about it. put electrodes on my head, check my blood chemistry. i am in love with the handpress. and it feels a lot like the people kind of in-love. i go to bed at night thinking about ludovine. i wake up in the morning thinking about ludovine. and she's actually pretty huggable.

still in the give-me-something-to-practice-on phase, i decided that knitted gifts are particularly nice to give when adorned by a hand-printed gift tag.

tamsin's baby's bear is all wrapped up and ready to go. the package is decorated with the ducky booties, and a little nametag i made on the press. the images are of a mama turkey and a baby turkey. why, you may ask. we haven't bought a whole lot of type or cuts yet, of course -- that is the answer. i didn't have too many applicable images. i like how this turned out.

tamsin, these days, can be mistaken for a therapy ball with legs and long curly red hair. her shower is friday -- i am excited.

a card featuring this image -- and a little swatch -- goes along with lisa's socks. lisa just e-mailed me that she was eating mashed sweet potatoes with espresso and rum in them. maybe the next pair of socks i make her will commemorate that.

when the philadelphia eagles played in the NFC championship game against the carolina panthers, i proposed a friendly wager to my friend lisa, who lives in south carolina. she doesn't give a shit about football, and didn't watch the game, and won the bet. i would have gotten some baked goods out of her if i had won; as it turned out, i made her a pair of socks.

i interviewed lisa about sizing, colors, fibers, et cetera. she has always struck me as a "dark primaries" color palette. she wanted machine washable socks, and told me to use my best judgement when it came to sparkliness. she also mentioned wearing a lot of argyles.

so, with that, and the NFC championship game in mind, i knitted the "argyle interception" socks. they have little stylized argyle motifs on them here and there, which also represent the interceptions run by the carolina panthers' ricky whoever, which played a big role in the panthers winning that game. these colors, as well, are the panthers' colors -- with a bit of "disco" mixed in. self-patterning sock yarns ARE fun, but you don't have to let them tell you what to do all the time. i bossed this "disco" around a bit.

from now on, i think i might not make anything but "fraternal twin" sock pairs. i like them best.

the printing press is in a good spot for sunlight and is a good place to take pictures. here is a little argyle motif, and a further detail of the press itself. above this spot where are names are engraved is a brass "acorn". printing lore has it that if your acorn is tarnished, it is a sign that you are printing pornography.

here are some ducky-feet booties that i made for the imminent baby of tamsin, whom i work with. i am feeling a personal connection with the baby's feet, since i think that is what i felt swishing past my hand when i was feeling for it on friday. it sort of glided over my palm, like a big fish glides by the window in an aquarium.

these booties are from that new book, it's got "baby booties" and "fifty" in the title, and they definitely sell it at borders, which is that bookstore where they don't even look at you askance if you are sitting there with an open notebook and a pen and a book you don't plan to buy, making copious notes. in fact they even provide a chair for you. i think i've said enough.

these booties are oversized in that they would fit on a 3 to 6 month-old's feet, but will look large -- more in proportion to a duck. it would be a recipe for disaster to let a baby who was learning to walk try to wear them. they are for non-walkers, babies whose feet are just sticking up into the air, complete cuteness-exploitation booties.

okay, maybe i do like naming the things that i knit. but none of that "gooseberry mousse" happy crappy.

and for that matter, i prefer seeing david straithairn be a slackjawed, evil purveyor of domestic abuse, thwapping kathy bates so hard in the kidneys she must have peed blood for days, in dolores claiborne... but how am i going to name a pair of socks after that?

once again, taking advantage of freebie tickets from work has taught me that i'm just not the theatregoing, concertgoing type. but i still needed some socks -- a short pair of socks, for warmer months coming -- and wanted to practice knitting them from the toe up. knitting socks from the toe up is great!

did anybody else buy this yarn at maryland sheep and wool? it was fifty cents a ball!

okay, i have been doing some previously unaforementioned holiday knitting, out of ben's range of vision. but i had nothing to knit while in his presence, so had to come up with a "decoy" project. it was this tiny pair of socks, which i have made the "gift tag" on my dad's rather lumpy, Lion In Winter-looking package. (remember all the lumpy gifts in that movie?)

i haven't forgotten that this, 2003, was to be the Year of Selfish Knitting. obviously, i didn't observe it as strictly as i could have. and even down to the wire, i was starting new holiday projects, however small. schmucki's husband refers to this, she tells me, as "mission creep". good one!

i had a good time making these! again, the colorway just does something for me... whether it's reminding me of a culture club twelve-inch dance mix on vinyl, or some autumn squashes and gourds, or koi in a pond... i like it.

today the socks are being courted by a handsome jewish intellectual. they are going to the warsaw café for lunch, and then going to see "the human stain" with anthony hopkins and ed harris. then they'll be addressing trick-or-treaters all evening.

i did learn a thing or two about sockmaking. this is my first successful inside-a-shoe pair, but the instep shaping on a generic sock recipe is too something for my flat foot. i'll have to toy with that next time around.

good deal, good fun!

i even think marcel might have worn them. finally, the proust boots are finished. i am thrilled with them; they feel absolutely magical on. (the right one is a bit tight around the heel area, but i'm loosening it up.)

while i am overjoyed with a finished product that comes satisfyingly close to the idea that i had in my head even before i finished reading proust, I DID NOT LIKE KNITTING THESE AT ALL. every stitch was like pulling a tooth. why? was three pairs of turkish-style socks in six or so months just too many? was it the manos on the fat wooden needles? they just felt wrong, ungainly, and unpleasant from beginning to end. however i was so devoted to the concept, colors, and idea of having them, that here they are, and i am very happy indeed.

"fitting" is the operative word here. fitting my proust boots to my feet and calves. i got one finished, and knew that i wanted a bit of a felted look (not so many clearly defined V-shapes in the stitches, a little halo, a well-worn look) but, since they were the knit with the same number of stitches for the foot and the leg, the foot was a little loose, the calf a little tight. the first thing i did, seen here, was block a bit, stretching the leg out with a pair of flip flops inside...

... then with a couple cans of tomato puree inside, to really push it open.

with the tomato cans inside (labels off, in case the ink ran), i scrubbed at the leg of the boot a bit, to fuzz it up somewhat. i did a little actual shrinking/fulling of the foot, particularly around the heel -- when i make those turkish heels, they tend to be a little loosely held together at the top and bottom -- like two lips. hot water, soap and scrubbing sort of fused them together nicely.

this whole process was more like playing with molding clay than it was like knitting! i still have half of another boot to knit, and then finish like the one that is drying now.

last march, i began reading marcel proust's "in search of lost time". in september, i finished. it was one of the greatest experiences of my life, and i wanted to commemorate it.

these slippersocks are my homage to proust. oh, sure, i THOUGHT about putting a madeleine on them! even tried to do a chart for one. but then i decided to go with something a little further into the text. this pattern, an anna zilboorg turkish sock pattern, is called "young man's mustache" -- which in and of itself reminds me of marcel. but the colors here (the two greens and the very pale pink "buds") are representative of proust's beloved hawthorne bushes.

these are in manos. i am thinking of felting them when i am finished.

my friend matthew once told me he sometimes pictured me "sitting around knitting angrily to the ramones". i think it was this type of sock he might have been imagining me knitting. whenever i worked on 'em, i had devo's "girl u want" in my head. they have already been worth the time i put into them in terms of pure pleasure of looking down at them. they are, however, a bit of a flop, literally -- rather loose, and while i can get shoes on over them, they don't feel good. too bulky, too floppy. i spend most of my time shoeless and indoors anyway, and i do love to have these on then.

aaaah, the holiday payoff of seeing people happy in their gifts. tim loved his turkish socks inspired by the munakata shiko woodblock exhibit. here he is standing on the edge of the couch. also in the photo: the tim and amber christmas stockings. should i make us new ones that say "PLAINTIFF" and "DEFENDANT"? i understand that not too many divorcing couples FILL each others stockings these days. tim and i do, and i know we are truly lucky.

for my dad's girlfriend; a big floppy set of wool/mohair slippersocks that i am giving her for christmas, with felting instructions, a pair of unfelted/felted swatches (so she can see what she's going for) and the hopes of getting an 'after' photo. with this, the christmas knitting is completed -- with a week to spare!

here is a progress-picture of the gargantuan sock i am knitting for tim for christmas. next to it, our miniature cat sleeps on a miniature pillow i made a few summers ago, in leftover manos and something else, in a basket weave pattern.

after visiting the exhibit of wood and stonecuts by japanese artist munakata shiko at the philadelphia museum of art, i decided to make these slippersocks for tim for christmas. (just traditional turkish sock charts and shiko-ed up colors.) here is part of one, pictured with some postcards i got at the exhibit.

flannery gives her approval to the finished product: ben's feet in his new slippersocks.

ben is a pro at trying on things that don't entirely exist. these are turkish socks from anna zilboorg's book in a blend of cotton and merino wool.