String souvenirs

I've always found textiles to be excellent souvenirs. They are relatively light, non-breakable, and fit into the nooks and crannies of one's luggage. On a recent trip to Guatemala I took the concept a bit farther and acquired a lot of thread. We visited a village on Lake Atitlán called San Juan de la Laguna, known for handweaving and other crafts. Interestingly, this village has a lot of cooperatives: painters, weavers, even the drivers of the small three wheeled taxis called tuk tuks.

At the cooperative Corazon del Lago, they weave lovely shawls like the one above on backstrap looms with cotton thread they dye themselves. As soon as I saw the example skeins of naturally dyed threads, I wanted not only shawls but also thread to play with myself. Here's the display of dye stuffs and the resulting colors. This kind of dyeing has a long tradition in Guatemala but is in the process of being revived. I found the brilliance of the colors they could achieve really stunning.

The thread comes from India and has a lovely sheen. People in this area traditionally grew cotton but they can't produce enough for the amount of weaving they do now.
   I bought the thread with the idea of using it on temari balls. I've used some already but it's very fine, which limits its use. Now I'm looking into the possibility of having them custom dye some thicker thread which I might then market in a very small scale way. It's looking like a project that will be slow to come to pass but one that has me feeling very excited about sharing these beautiful colors.

That warm fuzzy feeling

   As a long time avid knitter, I have built up quite a wardrobe of knit items for myself. Once in a while I do some knitting to donate.  It is some of the most satisfying knitting there is. My current favorite group to donate to is Afghans for Afghans. In spite of the name, they have now tend to focus their emphasis to sending small garments such as socks, mittens, and hats for babies and children. A quote from their web site:

Save the Children says that providing a wool cap to a newborn is one of the most cost-effective techniques to ensure child survival in the first few months.

With the difficulty and expense of shipping all the generous donations they get, they realized they can keep a lot more people warmer with many small items.
  This year I knit these baby socks for a campaign they ran. Aren't they cute?

Then I knit these mittens for someone about 7 or 8 years old. I think.

The great thing about knitting for donation is that the exact size is not critical. They will find someone that is the right size. Afghans for Afghans periodically announces campaigns when they have a group to partner with in Afghanistan. I encourage you to take part in one of their campaigns or find another group that accepts knitted donations. It will give you a lovely warm feeling. Here's a page on Ravelry that lists all kinds of organizations that distribute knitted items to people that need them.

Incan inspiration

  When we were in Peru several years ago, I acquired some beautiful weavings including this bag.

The quality of weaving and natural dyeing in Peru is amazing. As a former weaver, I am in awe of the weavings they create with the simplest of technology.
   Starting in Peru, I acquired the questionable habit of buying a ball or two of alpaca yarn in colors that appealed to me whenever I found them. This is probably the silliest way there is to begin to design a sweater. Finally I chose yarn from my stash and knit a sweater for myself combining stripes and waves. The wave motif is very common in Peruvian textiles and easy to transfer to knitting even though it's far less detailed than in fine weavings.

    I used bands of wave patterns and for my larger motif I designed a double wave inside a tilted rectangle.

   Many of my sweaters evolve as I knit them. For example, I often decide what to put on the sleeves once I get there. Instead of doing all kinds of math to figure out the sleeve decreases I lay out a sweater I like and put the new sleeve on top of it. Then I do my decreases to make it the same shape. As I knit the first sleeve I record what I do so I can make the second sleeve the same way.
   As I was sitting around admiring my handiwork on my almost completed sweater, I noticed a big boo-boo on the front where stitches in one row went astray. You can probably see it right away. (In this picture it's on the top wave band on the right side.) How did I not see that when I knit it!? Perhaps I was watching TV.

Fortunately there was an easy way to fix that with duplicate stitch.

Now I could show the front in public without being embarrassed.

I used steeks for the arm holes and the front band. After I cut the front steek I picked up stitches and knit the bands and their facings. Anything other than a zipper would have interfered with the pattern on the front bands. I found a company on-line that sells lightweight separating zippers in a plethora of colors so I was able to buy one that matched my band color very closely. Mr. Rududu drilled some small holes in that heavy plastic part at the bottom of the zipper so I could sew it down by hand.
  The sleeves are slightly inset for a better fit. After setting aside a few stitches for the underarm, I added my steek and decreased a stitch every other row for a couple of inches on each side of the steek. After grafting the shoulders, I cut the steek and picked up stitches around the arm hole. The sleeves were knit down to the cuffs and finished with a facing, as were the collar and bottom band. Purling two rows before the facing makes for a very neat edge. By the way, I started the sweater with a provisional cast on and added the lower band after I had decided what the bands would be like. All part of my "method".
  Most people use patterns and I've heard that people who design their own sweaters generally plan them out in advance. These people lead far less exciting lives than I. Failure to plan ahead can lead to exciting trips to the local yarn store in search of something very specific.  Perhaps the ladies at the yarn store wondered why I hadn't just bought all the yarn specified in the pattern. Wait a second. What pattern?

But now I do have a pattern. I'm so smitten with the feel of the alpaca and the lovely colors available I plan to continue collecting colors and some day I will turn to Peru for more inspiration.

Qiviet: yes, I know what it means!

   One day at our weekly Scrabble get together in Monteverde, a player browsing through the dictionary read out, "Qiviet, the wool of a musk ox" and said "Who on earth would know THAT word?" Happily, I am among the lucky few with qiviet experience. Qiviet is a gloriously soft and quite rare fiber. The arctic muskox sheds its thick undercoat all in a very short period in spring and it is combed, not sheared from the coarser guard hairs. Native people used to collect tufts of qiviet that had caught on plants. That was probably easier than cornering a wild animal that as an adult weighs an average of 285 kg/630 pounds. In fact, some qiviet is still collected in the traditional way.
   Friends that visited the Large Animal Research Station in Fairbanks gave me an ounce of a blend of 70% qiviet and 30% merino wool. The merino adds some spring that qiviet doesn't have, so it's an excellent blend for knitting. Qiviet itself is softer than cashmere and eight times warmer than sheep's wool.
   One ounce of my yarn was only 135 yards; we are talking a seriously rare and expensive fiber. After much thought I decided to knit a lace cowl because of the wonderful softness and because that way I won't lose it. I used a  pattern called Abstract Leaves Cowl by Deb Mulder. It's available free on Ravelry.

    Knit up, the yarn is much softer than in the skein. That's saying a lot because the skein is pretty darn soft. A sort of haze or halo develops around the yarn and according to the Large Animal Research Station website, the halo will continue to develop. On their web site you can see a fascinating video of an animal being combed. The fleece comes off in a big sheet or fleece. They also have yarn you can invest in.
   I love looking at the cowl close up. The color was called Blueberry but basically it's muskox color with undertones of bluish purple. I usually block lace but I'm going to wear this scrunched up on my neck so I didn't bother.

  While knitting this cowl I made use of my handy little electronic scale. For example I weighed my ball of yarn before and after a row of knitting and determined that one row took .5 grams of yarn. Thus I could calculate how many rows of the pattern I could do. I could also calculate when to change to the garter stitch border so that I would have enough to finish. It worked out very well because I had less than a yard left when I cast off. (I even have a project in mind for that little bit: it should be enough to make one or two knit acorns.)

 

  This cowl is probably the warmest garment you can make with an ounce of yarn. With the unusually cold weather we are having this week it's reassuring to have this luscious garment available.

Bee balm lace

   I just finished a lace shawl that reminds me of the common bee balm flower that grows with abundance in our Midwestern prairies.

I used the Ostrich Plume stitch pattern on page 278 of Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns. It looks complicated, but it's one of the easiest lace patterns I've ever knit. Three rows out of four you knit stockinette and the lace row is easy to memorize. I added a border of 5 stitches in garter stitch to keep it from curling.
   When knitting is in progress, the lace looks pathetic. Kind friends avert their eyes and do not question one's sanity. It's lumpy.

Below you see it during the blocking process, pinned to a sheet on top of my bed. The sheet is so I can see all the pins and remove them all. I used an entire box, doubtless hundreds. Using lots of pins reduces the waviness of the edge. Unblocked, the shawl measured 4 feet by 14 inches. Blocking made it magically grow to 5 1/2 feet by 19 inches. (1.7 meters by .5 meters) Because it is so thin a yarn and open an pattern it dried in a couple of hours, even in the summer humidity.

I am looking forward to wearing it. It's going to the opera!

Knitty gritty: I used an Italian yarn, Cashwool by Baruffa in lilac. It's 100% extra fine merino with 1350 meters to 100 grams. Apparently this yarn is no longer available in the US. This particular yarn went back and forth to Costa Rica not once but twice!

Procrastination points

   One of my personal guidelines is that if I finish a project that has been subject to procrastination, I give myself extra points. I'm not sure what these points are good for but it's a lot more fun than beating myself up for taking so long. I just finished a Fair Isle sweater that I started a 17 months ago. I hereby give myself lots of points!

   The pattern is my own. I first tried out the colors and flower pattern on a tam. I love trying to mix in a few surprise colors like the rust and a bright dark pink. I prefer shading effects in the two color ribbing.  

  I decided to make the sweater as a rather fitted cropped jacket. This is the first Fair Isle sweater in which I have I shaped the arm holes so the sweater is a bit sleeker. 

 The knitty gritty: The yarn is Jamieson and Smith two ply jumper weight knit on 2.5 mm needles (US 1.5). To figure out the armhole shaping I referred to Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting and found a sweater using about the same number of stitches as I needed. The body was knit with steeks for the armholes and the front. After knitting the body and cutting the steeks, I picked up stitches around the arm hole for the sleeves and knit down until the sleeves were long enough for me. The front bands and cuffs were knit on 1.75 mm/US 00 needles and have facing knit on size 1.5mm/US000 needles. Maybe that's why the closer I got to the end of the sweater, the slower it seemed to go.

Stripes of various sorts

  Using self-striping yarn always reminds me of how I adored yarn that changed color when I was about eight. I hope I never totally grow up if it means I have to get too sophisticated for this kind of yarn. One of its advantages is that just plain knitting can be rather interesting but not require much attention. I often knit my socks during Scrabble games when I'm waiting for my turn. (How much knitting I get done depends on who I'm playing with but it does keep me from going nuts during slow games. )

  I recently knit some socks from some vintage yarn I got at a de-stashing event and I don't know what the brand is. I thought the yarn was ugly in the ball, but when I knit it up I really liked the socks. Moral of the story: it's just really hard to tell what self-striping yarn will look like when knit.  Oddly, the stripes stacked up much wider on one of the socks than the other.

I was also pleasantly surprised by this Zino  by Plymouth Yarn in colorway 2. On the ball band the tiny picture can't show the lovely subtlety of the colors. So far it's not looking nearly as stripey as I expected. By the way, the photo shows the sock and yarn in a stainless steel bowl. I like to use a bowl to keep the ball from rolling around on the floor. During the dry season in Monteverde things can get quite dusty.

  Much more elaborate are the stripes in my current Fair Isle project, a cardigan sweater. I wonder if everyone puts markers between their repeats in a Fair Isle project. By making sure the marker is in the same place of each pattern as you go around, you can notice mistakes right away. I just use loops I've made out of string as my markers. On the left you can see a steek; I mark each side of a steek. They might not coincide with a pattern repeat but it's important to know where to start and end them. This is definitely not knitting to be done while playing Scrabble.

Imaginary friends

  My imaginary friends are very interesting people. That's what I call people I get to know on the internet such as other members of Ravelry or authors of interesting blogs. One of my favorite blogs about knitting is Asplund knits by a Swedish guy. Although we haven't met, we've exchanged enough comments and messages that I feel he is one of my realer imaginary friends.
  In a recent post, he had photos of an fantastic sweater he is knitting. The thing I appreciate about Mr. Asplund's knitting is that even if he uses a pattern, he makes many interesting modifications to it. (I also like it that he doesn't have the entire thing planned out in advance, because it makes me feel more normal to know that other people do that too.) This particular sweater features a detail at the shoulder of black and white checks. Since then, he has also posted pictures of a very cunning facing for the sleeve cuff that is also checkerboard. I love little semi-hidden details like that. He also put his initials in the gusset under the arm.
  His checkerboards got me thinking about how many cultures value checkerboard patterns. Mr. Rududu and I were in Peru four years ago and discovered that checkerboards have been very important there for centuries. There is a traditional religious offering cloth woven in Peru that consists of just 4 squares in natural alpaca colors. Here' an example I saw at El Centro de Textiles Traditionales del Cusco. Among the offerings are coca leaves, which don't give you a buzz but certainly do help with the discomfort of being at a very high altitude.

   Amazingly, these warp-faced offering clothes traditionally have no cut edges; all four sides are selvedges. They do this by making a discontinuous warp. This mind-bogglingly difficult technique involves using two sets of warp threads that loop together in the middle. Then they fill in all of the warp by eventually inserting the weft with needles as the space gets smaller and smaller. This must take a very long time.
   Aside from the somewhat magical aspect of weaving something with selvedges on all sides, Peruvian weavers don't like to waste their warp thread, which stands to reason since it's all hand spun and is a precious commodity. To clarify how they made these checkerboards, here is a photo of a weaver finishing up a piece by using every single bit of her warp.

You can see she has very little space left to separate the yarns (make a shed in weaver's parlance) and there is a needle laying on her weaving that she can use to feed the yarn through that space since it is now too tiny to use a shuttle. In the photo she is beating down the weft thread with a bone tool.
  Finally, here is a somewhat more elaborate use of a checkerboard design in an old weaving displayed at the Archeological Museum in Lima. It makes me want to polish off my double-knitting techniques. 

Six secrets of a non-swatcher

  I am about to reveal a shocking knitting secret. I don't always swatch. In another post, Favorite Fair Isle tips, I wrote about the importance of swatching. Yes, we all know that "To save time, swatch." Well, I just don't think swatching is that much fun. More power to you if you like knitting swatches and I have one friend who actually claims she does. I prefer the feeling of creating something useful and in some ways I'm both impatient and lazy.
  Basically, swatching is done to find your gauge or to test color combinations. However, both kinds of swatching can be minimized and sometimes eliminated. For example, if you knit socks, knit them from the toe up and add stitches until the foot fits. You don't need to swatch at all.
Non-swatching hint number 1: Knit socks from the toe up. If necessary, you can pick a stitch pattern after you know how many stitches you will use.

   I have knit some very successful garments without swatching. My Nether Garment has at this point been viewed by over 30,000 people on Ravelry. The greatest honor I have received as a knitter is that my version of the Nether Garment was included in the commemorative re-issue of Elizabeth Zimmermann's The Knitters Almanac. The beauty of the project for me was that it called for no swatching because the garment itself was a rather large swatch. Indeed, when I am designing new Fair Isle projects I often get it out in search of a pattern or color combination to inspire me. I needed to guess how many stitches per inch I would get and I did that by measuring a previous project, such as a hat. Then I cast on for the ankle. After a couple of inches, I tried it on to make sure it fit. It did. As I knit the garment I occasionally tried on a leg to make sure it was staying on track for size. I spread out my hoard of Shetland yarn and grabbed colors as the mood struck me and selected patterns as I went along. It was the most fun I've ever had knitting.

Non-swatching hint number 2: If you hate swatching, find a favorite yarn. I have a couple kinds of yarn that I use over and over. Measuring an old project is usually as accurate as making a new swatch and often more so. Just be sure to record the size needle you knit projects with.
Non-swatching hint number 3: Pretend you aren't actually knitting a swatch. Guess the needle size based on the ball band and knit a hat. It will fit someone. Measure its gauge. It's not a swatch, it's a useful hat. Or knit other  small objects such as mittens or a small bag. Purses are easy, but should be lined with fabric to prevent sagging.

   A very good reason to swatch is to check color combinations. However, the more colors you use, the less important this is. A garment I made without swatching my colors was my Blues and Oranges vest.  Before I went to Costa Rica for the season, I made a pile of beautiful cool colors (blues and purples) and a pile of beautiful warm colors (reds, oranges, and pinks). I didn't even decide to use the triangle and slanting lozenge patterns until I got to Costa Rica, I just knew I would use some small repeating pattern. I used pairs of warm and cool colors and tried to not repeat any color combinations, although each color appeared in many different bands. In between, I used the same two row pattern of rectangles in the same two colors. The only part I swatched was to choose the ribbing colors.

 

Non-swatching hint number 4: If you use enough different colors and patterns, it's going to look good. While I tend to use bright colors, you can do it with muted colors too. If you use lots of colors, your garment with go with lots of things.
   I repeated the same strategy with greens and purples for my Motmot in the Forest vest although the vertical pattern repeat is longer. It has bands of vertical lines, checks, and diagonal lines.
Non-swatching hint number 5: Use a limited number of patterns and a dominant color or two to unify a garment.

By the way, in the dumbest ever of my knitting mistakes, I didn't notice that I knit the vest on a needle smaller than I usually use until I was ready to cut the steek. I ended up cutting up the sides and adding panels to make it large enough to fit me. Proof if ever there was one that swatching for gauge isn't always necessary if you are willing to go to great extremes to fix a problem. (Non-swatchers are more creative, sometimes out of necessity.) I don't recommend this method as it can add a lot of stress to your life when you discover a garment is radically the wrong size.
Non-swatching hint number 6: If you really screw up with your gauge, it might be possible to fix it with bands. Sometimes I have made wider bands in the front to compensate for a vest that came out a little smaller than expected.
   So if you love colors, I encourage you to make up a game plan for a garment, get a whole bunch of colors you love and just dive in. It's unbelievable fun. And by the way, if you have any other non-swatching tips, please let me know.

Tam tips

   Knitting a tam is a great way to test out Fair Isle color combinations and also results in something nice to keep your head warm. I've knit several tams of my own design and am always pleasantly surprised with how the crown patterns work out. The crowns have become my favorite part, especially since they go faster and faster as you decrease towards the middle.

   Basically a tam starts with a band that fits snugly around your head. I like to knit it in corrugated ribbing. This is done by using two colors: alternating two knit stitches in one color and two purl stitches of another. It's especially fun to change colors on the purled stitches to create wonderful shaded effects. Here's a close up of corrugated ribbing on a vest and on a tam.

Warning: this kind of ribbing is not stretchy so you need to get the number of stitches pretty accurately. If you don't want to bother, a one color ribbed band is fine too. After the band, one increases rapidly, knits straight for a while, and then decreases in wedge shapes to come to the center. The higher mathematics of planning a tam can be found in Knitted Tams by Mary Rowe. (This book is now out of print, but check your local library.) Or you can take any basic tam pattern and plug in your own colors or pattern. The thing I like about planning my own tam is that I don't have to match someone else's gauge. I'm lazy that way.

    The completed tam will look like an amorphous blob until you block it. Then it will magically transform into a wonderful circular mandala for your head. I blocked older tams on an 11"/28 cm diameter dinner plate. I wanted my most recent tam to be slightly larger and chose 12"/30.5 cm as my diameter. Not having a plate of that size and not wanting to get into a difficult woodworking project, I cut a circle out of 3/8" thick Foam Core. (That's about 1 cm.) This very rigid yet light board used by artists, is foam bonded between two sheets of thick paper. (You could use thicker board, but thinner board might bend as the tam is stretched over it.) I traced the circle around a frying pan and cut it out freehand with a utility knife. It doesn't have to be perfect since tams, like all knitted items, are forgiving. I slipped the circular form into a garbage bag so that it wouldn't absorb water. Next I washed my tam and blotted it dry with a towel and then stretched it over the form.  A tam knit of Shetland 2 ply jumper yarn is quite thin and dries quickly.  In the near dessert conditions of a Midwestern house in winter, mine was dry in about 5 hours. To speed drying, I placed the form and tam on a glass so air could circulate around it.

   Trying on my tam, I found it looked too large and floppy. One can get a tam to be slightly smaller by reblocking it, so I cut a smaller blocking circle. This time I traced an 11" dinner plate and made a series of marks 1/4" out to result in an 11.5"/29 cm form. Then I connected those marks and cut along that line. I rewashed my hat and reblocked it. This time it came out just the way I wanted it.

From the knitting archives: an old friend

  My very first stranded sweater is still one of my favorites.

In the early 80s (!!) I decided to knit myself a Norwegian sweater. There was a local yarn store called the Yarn Stua that specialized in Norwegian yarn. I had always loved my father's dark blue and white sweater from Norway. From what I understood, women's sweaters were traditionally mostly white or a light color and a dark navy sweater was for men, but I don't live in Norway and I loved the color so that's what I bought. I got a big bag of yarn and an informative and now out-of-print Dover book from 1974 called How to Knit Your Own Norwegian Sweaters. Even at the time, some of the photos looked dated. It was the hair. It's always the hair, isn't it? However, the sweaters have a classic look that has stood the test of time well—especially compared to many sweaters of the 80s.

   I cast on and knit diligently. I was used to worsted weight yarn and it seemed to go very slowly on those 2.5mm/#1 needles but I found the developing pattern kept me interested in a way that knitting in monochrome didn't. It was the beginning of a lot of stranded knitting.  I had never knit a sweater in the round before and this was my first sweater with a steek. A knitting friend had to come over and help keep me calm when I cut the steek. I survived to cut many another steek.

  What I love best about this sweater now is the wonderful sheen it has developed by being worn and worn. I had to replace the cuffs once but otherwise it soldiers on; the elbows don't even look dangerously thin. I don't wear it as much these days because I have so many sweaters, but it holds a special place in my heart for setting me on the road to many adventures with stranded knitting.

The Knitty-gritty: Knit in Peer Gynt by Sandnes Garn, a DK weight yarn from Norway. It has now become easier in my area to find Dalegarn Heilo, an equivalent weight yarn. 

Favorite Fair Isle tips

  Fair Isle and stranded knitting are among my favorite ways of playing with colors.  Sadly, one can spend hours and hours knitting with colors that look glorious next to each other in the ball just to end up with disappointing results in knit form. I don't like knitting ugly things or garments that don't fit, and agree that swatching is a good idea before launching into a major project. However, while some people really love swatching, I prefer getting onto the real knitting as soon as possible. There are a couple of quick tricks I use to eliminate colors that won't work  before I pick up my needles. One way of checking colors is to wrap two colors together on a ruler or card.

You can wrap in stripes that are one to three yarns wide. This lets you learn about how the colors work when seen in close proximity. Entire semester courses (or a lifetime) can be spent learning how colors look different depending on what other color they are next to. Without learning a lot of color theory, wrapping little test cards like this can save you a lot of time. Get wild with it; the time required is so small that you can discover unexpectedly wonderful color combinations in just a few minutes.
  Another thing you can check with wrapping yarn like this is value contrast. Other than using colors you love, the most important thing in picking colors for knitting is value—the colors' lightness or darkness. If you don't have sufficient value contrast, hours or even months of knitting can result is something that is so subtle that the pattern can only be seen in a very bright light and at very close range. Subtlety is fine but I prefer to knit patterns so they can be seen. If you can't clearly see the colors in your wrapping test in a rather dim room you might be aiming at a result that is too subtle. How much contrast you need depends partly on your pattern. If you are knitting a pattern with lines consisting of a single stitch, it's necessary to have more contrast than if there are bigger blocks of each color. (A benefit of having enough contrast is that knitting is a lot easier because you aren't straining your eyes to see what color the next stitch on the needle is.)
   My other way of testing color combinations if with my handy point-and-shoot camera. Like most such inexpensive cameras, it has a monochrome setting. I lay out the balls of yarn that I'm considering and take black and white photos of them. If a pair looks the same in the photo, it probably won't work. It has no contrast. For example, look at these beautiful balls of purple and green, one of my favorite color combinations.

It looks yummy, but there's a problem. These two colors are almost identical in value as you can see in this monochrome picture.

Try to see that single purple yarn draped over the green. Unless they are knit in very large areas of colors, the pattern will not be easy to see.
  To avoid an unintended stripy look in Fair Isle knitting, it's best to maintain very similar contrast between the foreground colors and the background colors through out the pattern. As your background gets darker, your foreground color can get darker. If your background color suddenly gets darker relative to its foreground color, it will read like a stripe. When I knit this example swatch, I didn't have the light yellow I wanted and resorted to a mustard. Stripe.

The mustard and blue are lovely together and would certainly work well in some design but I don't care for the stripey effect; I want the entire flower to read as a unit. The monochrome photo of the yarn shows there is a huge jump of contrast between the yellow and mustard. (By the way, it's easier to judge value by eye for shades of the same color. )

For this pattern, a combination of background colors with a lighter yellow instead of the mustard will work better.

I find using these techniques makes my swatching time much more productive. And fun.
 

Holes in sock. Darn!

  Admiring my favorite socks the other night before I took them off, I was shocked to see the heels were almost worn though. There were no actual breaks in the yarn, but in places it was the thickness of a single hair. Eek! Time for drastic action. 
  The sock pattern is Pomatomus, a free pattern by Cookie A available from Knitty, an on-line knitting magazine. If you like to knit and don't know about Knitty, check it out immediately as it's a treasure trove.

This is one of the most popular sock patterns on Ravelry and thousands have knit it. It's the only sock pattern I've done so far that I plan to do again in a different color. Meanwhile I want to get some more use of this pair and even have some of the same yarn in my stash so I resolved to repair them.
  My mom used to darn socks—not because we were poor but because she grew up in the Great Depression and that's what people did. To darn you need only some yarn, a blunt needle and something round to put inside the sock, called the darning egg. Mom used a light bulb as her darning egg and stitched back and forth across the hole, then wove over and under those threads.
  Because I noticed before there was an actual hole, I was able to use duplicate stitch on the existing stitches, trying to follow the trajectory of the original yarn. I'm not great to duplicate stitching and it gets very confusing in a hurry as the new fat yarn obscures what one is trying to do. In spite of wandering from the true path many times, my patches look quite acceptable and I think they will be functional.
  I used a cuckoo call as my darning egg. I don't actually call cuckoos, but I bought this because I thought it was beautiful. I actually use it to let Mr. Rududu know when dinner is ready. I'm not saying he's a cuckoo...
   I found a really good explanation of how to mend a sock with duplicate stitch even if there is a hole here.

 

The nitty gritty: Pomatomus uses a lace pattern, but I found the large holes I got when I knit it as written distracting. To reduce their size, I knit through the back on all stitches after a yarn over. (ie sittiches that were marked on the pattern as a purl after a yo became knit through the back stitches.) I knit these in Plymouth Yarn Happy Feet.