All good things must end

Tonight was the last meeting of our knit night at the local yarn shop, since it is shortly closing down. We had a good turnout and there were some rowdy, rowdy folks there taking advantage of the fifty percent discount on all yarns in the shop. I know I started this blog with the intention of talking about rescued yarn, but come on…it was half price…I couldn’t just leave it there. I spent my whole allowance!

I do have one finished item to tell you about. Recently finished, in fact. SO recently finished that I wove in all the ends while chatting with the ladies at knit night and immediately gave it away. I took a snapshot a few weeks ago, when I was only down to the heel flap, so you will have to extrapolate for the finished product.

It is a pair of socks made in Cascade Fixation, which is a yarn composed mostly of cotton with a smidge of elastic thrown in. I have never worked with it before, it’s very springy and not at all what I expected. The pattern is “Broadripple Socks”, available free from Knitty.com. The pattern creator owns a yarn shop in Lansing that I visited last year. The pattern was easy, the yarn was nice…but I just felt lukewarm about the whole project.

I have a friend who is a dedicated sock knitter. I know that she has made scarves, blankets, and even one memorable sweater, but she really gets her thrill from making socks. Myself, well, I have made socks, and I can do so with no trouble, but I just don’t really enjoy either the process or the product. I should explain that a little further.

There are two main types of knitters, “process” knitters and “product” knitters. Process knitters enjoy the meditative, repetitive motion of the needles; passing the yarn through their hands; learning new techniques; and will eventually churn out some kind of finished object. A Process knitter can look at a scarf, see a few flaws in it, and say “Oh well, it was fun to work with that variegated stuff, what’s next?”

A Product knitter, on the other hand, is all about the end result, focused on having a beautiful piece of lace or a wonderful pair of mittens or the perfect hat. A Product knitter may not care about the zen-like calm of the knit rhythm when she sees that mistake oh-my-god-that-mistake-you-could-see-from-outer-space. A Product knitter will rip out and remake the item, as many times as it takes until the thing is perfect. Because if you are going to do it, do it right.

I would characterize myself as about 70% Process / 25 % Product / 5% rabid experimenter. I enjoy knitting, and will stop and fix a mistake if I see it, but I also strike out on my own occasionally just to see what will happen. It’s the right combination for me.

My friend, the original knitter of these socks, is a product knitter. She usually does quite well, but sadly she was stricken with a terrible disease: SSS. There is no charity for this disease and nobody raises funds for it. SSS stands for “Second Sock Syndrome”, and it is what happens when an otherwise perfectly normal pair of socks touch some hitherto unknown nerve in a knitter which makes them loathsome to look at. Symptoms are easily explained, as the first sock in a pair is knitted with no trouble, but the second sock…the second sock may never even be started. It may be started and then abandoned. The knitter may even convince herself that she never wanted a second sock in the first place and what are you looking at?? A few months ago, this innocent pair of purple stripey socks was thrust into my hands by my friend who said to get the damned things out of her sight! (I took no offense, as I know it was the disease talking).

I brought the socks and the little ball of yarn home where I promptly forgot about them. A few weeks ago, in a sweep for unfinished items, it floated to the surface again and became my travel knitting. Now my friend who gave these to me is a very tight knitter, and she had gotten about two inches into the second sock before the, um, infection took hold. I am not that tight of a knitter, so I had to do a little bit of experimenting to find the right needle size to match her gauge. I figured it out and was off, zooming down to the heel when I stopped to take the photo above. I kept at it, and finally finished the toe and grafted it shut tonight during our farewell party.

I tried to offer it back to my friend who originally started this whole thing, but she had some kind of lingering resentment toward the sock (perfectly innocent sock), so she declined. The socks would not exactly fit me, so I offered them up and one lady in the group took them home. So the socks have a new home, my friend is purged of her last pocket of SSS (with regard to that pair, anyway), and I have room on my agenda to start something new.

Good thing I cleaned up at that clearance sale!