Socks Socks Socks

I just found this book at the local library. 70 winning sock patterns from the Knitter's Magazine contest by 64 sock knitters from the USA, Canada, Iceland, and New Zealand. It was published in 1999, but the patterns are timeless. The Table of Contents lists seven broad categories of socks, including Simple Socks, Kids Socks, Lace Socks, Color Socks, Texture Socks, Whimsical Socks, and Icelandic Socks.

This book is for experienced knitters who want to learn how to knit socks, as well as for sock knitters who are looking for advanced socks challenges. It looks like it is still available from Amazon at a very reasonable price, considering how many patterns there are in it. The reader reviews for this book on Amazon are generally favorable. The biggest complaint is that some of the patterns have mistakes in them. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an eratta page at the publisher's website. However, there does seem to be an Online Forum called KniTalk. This is the website for Knitter's Magazine, which I recently saw on the magazine rack at my local Borders book store.

I really enjoy finding these older sock knitting books, especially since I'm a beginning sock knitter.

When Knitting Becomes An Obsession

Directed by: Laura Neuvonen
Country: Finland
Year of Production: 2005
Running Time: 6:45

Watch on YouTube.

My Giant Knit-Knit

Yesterday, while at the Tuesday Morning store, I spotted a crank knitting machine. These types of knitting machines usually sell for about $30, but I bought it for $8.61 including tax. It came with two balls of DK weight acrylic yarn, totaling about 70 grams. There was also a plastic needle, a plastic hook tool, a yarn guide, and an instruction manual included.

The eight page instruction manual was written in seven languages, with GB (Great Britain - English) being one of them. Even with English instructions, I doubt that any child would have been able to figure out how to set up the machine, or successfully knit with it, despite it having For Ages 5 & Up on the box.

I have watched some videos on YouTube on how to set up these types of knitting machines, so I was able to figure it out. It only took a few minutes to knit a tube from one of the balls of yarn.

There is a switch on the front of the machine that can be set to circular knitting, or square/rectangular knitting. With it set to circular knitting, it keeps going around and around, making a tube. Set to rectangular knitting, it will go in one direction until it hits a stop, then it must be cranked in the other direction until it hits a stop. Working back and forth creates a flat panel. This machine has 22 needles.

So, what does this have to do with sock knitting, you ask? Well, some of the things I've run across while searching the Web for sock stuff, are sock dyeing blanks. People make knitted fabric on a knitting machine, then dye the fabric in all kinds of colors. The fabric is then unraveled, wound into balls, and socks are knitted from the hand-dyed yarn.

How To Get Want You Want has more information on various crank knitting machines.

For $8.61, I couldn't pass it up. My Giant Knit-Knit is now part of my knitting studio.

Wool Yarn Ball Winder

Instead of constantly updating the wool winder information on the Animation and Automata blog, I decided to make a static web page for it: Wool Yarn Ball Winder. There is also a page for the Umbrella Swift.

That site has more detailed information, and it will be easier to update. So far, I have a Rough Draft finished and uploaded. I'm not a technical writer, so trying to explain how to make a Wool Winder is actually quite difficult. Part of the difficulty stems from trying to make the instructions generic, so that people can make a custom wool winder that does the work they want it to do, rather than slavishly copying the 3:1 ratio wool winder that I made.

I'm also trying to make some new drawings that show more details. I'm doing all the drawings using the KolourPaint program on my Debian GNU/Linux computer. I will continue polishing the tutorial until it reaches a finished state. Anyone with questions can PM me on Ravelry.