First up, a friendly (and totally self-promoting) reminder. The Daphne Ann Mystery Knit price will increase from $6.00 to $9.50 on Friday. So today and tomorrow is all you got if you want the cheaper price. We start knitting on August 15th!!!

Second on the agenda is a tutorial. It’s been awhile since I’ve done a tutorial. But here’s the thing. ALL of my lace patterns will look better, get bigger, and be nicer if you give them a good, rigorous blocking. That sounds a bit um, yeah. But it’s the truth.

Today I blocked Renita. It will be for sale just as soon as my fabulous tech editor finishes with it and I get some proper pictures. So we’re gonna do this step by step – how to block a triangular shawl.

SUPPLY LIST

• Knitted piece, with ends woven in, but NOT trimmed
• Water and a big bowl or basin, and some sort of wool soak if desired
• Listening material – you can’t watch TV and do this properly
• Pins and/or wires and/or cotton string
• Blocking surface – I use a 6 foot square styrofoam block. Some folks block on their carpeted floor or bed with a towel underneath. I also have those nice garage foam blocks that interlock.

STEP ONE: Time for a bath!

You need to soak your piece for a minimum of 30 minutes. I use warm tap water and a squirt of Soak or Eucalan. You don’t need to rinse out the good wool washes. And you need the time to make sure all the fibers are fully saturated. After the bath you need to use a towel or somesuch to carefully squeeze the excess water out of the knitted piece.

STEP TWO: Establish an edge. You can do this with pins or wires or string. This shawlette has a shallow triangle shape, so I establish the top edge first.

This shawlette has a nice picot edging with eyelets along the top. So I begin by threading my blocking wires (I used three long ones) through the eyelets. This gives the shawlette a straight edge to pull against.

After I have the wires in, I use some pins to hold the straight edge in place.

STEP THREE: Stretch out the other two sides. You can use wires or string for this, but I like pins.

I do the points a few at a time. And I do them well spaced apart so I am stretching things as evenly as possible.

STEP FOUR: Fix the details. Again, I’m using pins here. You can run a wire or string through all the points, but I like this method better. Although I did run out of T-Pins this go-round.

You can see how the picot points are nice and even. I usually remove the holding wires I started with. I want the eyelets to form naturally from the points – not from the wire.

STEP FIVE: Straighten up the edges.

This is kind of wonky here as you can see. So I use the pins to stretch the points out into a straight line. When I’m finished fixing it, things looks more like this:

The points are lined up (to my satisfaction) and the entire stockinette portion of the shawl has opened up and grown.

All that’s left to do now is let the beautiful finished object dry in place – at least 24 hours – and then you can trim the woven in ends. I like the styrofoam block because I can stand it upright and not take up as space in my little house. This is not the *only* way to block, but this is the way I do it. Hope it helps you on your next lacy adventure.

A lot of times I get asked questions about how I design. Hmmm. It’s not always the same. Sometimes I see something and it inspires a fabulous idea. If I’m on top of things I file that inspiration away in some useable form. Sometimes the ideas leave my head as quickly as they come and they never see the light of day. I found myself a little leather notebook that is filled with graph paper though, and I’ve been getting much better at throwing together a quick sketch or a chart. So less ideas are going off into the ether.

On Saturday Kimber and I worked at the yarnstore. The day was winding down and it had been a long one. We were rearranging yarn and kind of just slugging along when the owner offered up a treat. New yarn to stock on the shelves! Kimber and I are grade-A first-class yarn sniffers. And touchers, and fondlers… well if you get it, you get it, and if you don’t, there’s no way to explain it. But we were happy. A Stitch In Time now carries Lorna’s Laces in Worsted, Sock, and Helen’s Lace. All gorgeous. Plus we now have MadelineTosh Tosh Sock. There are no words for how gorgeous this, so here’s a picture of what I brought home in the Ink colorway:

I bought it for a specific purpose. There is this amazing reversible stitch pattern I’ve been wanting to use in a shawlette pattern. And I thought this would be perfect. So I brought it home and held it in my lap for a long time. And then I decided that it would not work for it’s intended purpose. I do this all. the. time. Sometimes I end up using the yarn for something else. Sometimes the yarn is forlorn and lost for a very long time. But this yarn was too pretty. So I caked it up and tried to re-purpose it.

It did not work. At all. The idea I had is a good one. But it needs some tweaking and it’s not ready for public consumption as it were. So I went back to the yarn’s original intended purpose. (This happens all the time!) Because I had abandoned the original idea without actually swatching it, I figured it wouldn’t kill me to swatch.

And I love the combination! Today I spent a few hours on SugarbeeStudios’ couch. I charted up the pattern, and I modified it with a coordinating lace edging. As soon as my household duties are done today I will swatch it all up to make sure it works. And then it will be pattern-writing time. Coming soon to a pdf near you…

Today we have more fun with crochet hooks. Teensy, tiny, metal crochet hooks. If you’re a sock knitter and you don’t have one, you should fix this immediately. Get thee to a store, and buy a metal crochet hook, a 2.0 mm one is perfect for all your sock knitting needs. It allows you to pick up stitches with tiny yarn, and it is crucial if you want to work easy nupps in fine weight yarns.

I have a lovely Swallowtail Shawl in progress. It’s been sitting for a while though. Because of the nupps. I breezed through the basic lace, but the nupps (p5tog?!?!?!?!) were killing me. So it was sitting. But last month the sock pattern for the Sugarbee Studios Sock Club had to have nupps. The lace pattern had been picked out for months. So it was time to master the nupp.

This tutorial works well for a k5tog (knit 5 together) or a p5tog (purl 5 together). In the Caloroso socks, it’s a k5tog. In the swallowtail, it’s the backside – a p5tog. Basically what you have in both situations is a case where you increased from one stitch to 5 stitches. And you need to bring them all back together.

Step One: Slip all 5 sts purl-wise off of the left-hand needle onto the crochet hook.

Step Two: For a p5tog, bring the yarn to the front of the crochet hook, and wrap it around the hook itself clock-wise. (For a k5tog, put the yarn at the back of the work and wrap it around the hook clock-wise).

Step Three: Twist the head of the crochet hook to grab the working yarn and pull it through all 5 sts.

Step Four: Use the hook to place the working yarn loop onto the right-hand needle.

Once you get the hang of this, the p5togs and k5togs will go really quickly – no slower than a cable. And you can make pretty things like my Caloroso socks without pulling your hair out.

Ok, so it’s not really sooper seekrit, seeing as I’ve taught it in my classes to at least 50 people (probably more). But it’s good, and when people think something is a secret recipe, it makes it more desirable, no? Ok, maybe not. But anyways…

So here it is. The way I like to start socks. You need:

1 crochet hook (smallish)
1 40-inch addi needle (or other long circular with a very flexible cord)
Sock yarn
About one yard of waste yarn in a similar weight

Ok. Grab your crochet hook, your needle, and your waste yarn. Leave the sock yarn alone for now. Give it a drink or a cookie or something to hold it until your ready for it. Assuming that you’re right handed (if you’re not please reverse the instructions if if helps), things should be positioned like this:

You’ve got the waste yarn attached to the crochet hook with a slip knot. The needle is on the left, and underneath. The crochet hook is on the right and on top. The working yarn is wrapped under the needle from the right and has been looped back over the top. What you are doing is basically chaining right onto the needle, by using the crochet hook to pull a loop of the working yarn through the loop already on the hook. It will start to look like this:

Each time you add a new stitch, you will need to take the working yarn down under the needle to the right and back around to the top. You want to chain ONTO the needle, not independent of the needle.

How many stitches should you cast on? That’s a very good question. I’m shooting for 60-64 stitches with this sock. So I cast on 14. If your st count is divisible by four, do this: St count divided by four, minus two. For mine I did 64/4 = 16 – 2 = 14 sts to cast on. Is that too scary? Well if it is, comment or shoot me an e-mail or pm me on Ravelry and I will figure it out for you. If your st count is *not* divisible by four, do this: St count divided by four, rounded down, minus two. 70 sts = 70/4 = 17.5 is about 17 -2 = 15 sts to cast on.

Ok enough math. Did you hear me? The math is done. Wipe the drool off your chin and pay attention again. When you’ve cast on the required number of sts, leave a nice long loop, as shown below. We’ll use that later for the unzipping!

So you have your however many sts cast on. Now it’s time to give some loving to that sock yarn. Ew. That’s just gross. Just switch to the main yarn and get ready to work. This is what you do, you knit 7 rows in stockinette stitch, with the first row being knit. Just to be clear: Rows 1, 3, 5 & 7: Knit all sts. Rows: 2, 4, & 6: Purl all sts. You will end up with a tiny rectangle that will look like the one below. Now you’re ready to unzip.

Turn your work around so that the wrong side is facing you. Using the other end of your circular needle, insert it into the first st on the needle (the one with the long loop attached to it) from the back to the front. Once your needle is in the work, unzip that first stitch. Do this for all the remaining stitches, one by one.

Once all of your stitches have been unzipped, you are ready to pick up sts on each end of the rectangle to work in the round. All you have to do is pick up two sts on each of the short ends of the rectangle. It doesn’t have to be crazy precise where they go, as it is the toe of your sock. But picking up 2 sts on each end moves you from rectangular knitting to knitting in the round.

The next part is easy. You just need to alternate increase rounds (increasing 4 sts each round) with knitting plain to get the toe to the right size for you. Which increase should you use? Another very good question. I used to be all anal about mine, doing left leaning bar increases and llincs and all that nonsense. But then I remembered it’s my toe! And if it’s cold enough to wear socks here (which rarely happens for me) I am really not gonna care. So I just do kf&b (knit front & back) increases. And honestly, I think they look very nice.

Oh and that lovely background? It’s the chart for my newest sock. It’s not as bad as it looks. And I think it will be worth it. More on that later.