I kept wanting to photograph the in-progress "Angee" socks (from Innovations in Sock Knitting), but could not figure out how to stretch the cuff without doing the tricky and risky (because you can drop stitches) maneuver of putting the partially finished sock on my foot.

But then I realized today I could stick one of my drinking glasses in the partially finished sock, and while it's not quite as wide as my calf, it's wide enough to show the pattern:



I'm really enjoying knitting on it; it's one of those "just one more round" patterns where you want to keep going on it because it's fun to see it develop. There's a nice rhythm to it.

And I really like the yarn - it's a Fibra Natura yarn, 100% wool with a nice tight twist, and the autumnal colors are very pretty and soothing to look at.

I like this sock book a lot. The socks in it are complex, but not ridiculously complex.

And I found a pattern that would work "out of the box" for my "yellow stockings, cross-gartered" - the Wannida sock pattern in the book is made so it appears to have a series of overlapping ribbons on the sock (the illusion is formed with carefully placed yarn-overs and decreases). And I even have some super-brilliant-yellow wool and bamboo blend sock yarn in my stash waiting on the right pattern!

So, they're not knee socks. That's okay, I never wear knee socks anyway, and I always wear socks with trousers so no one would know they weren't knee socks. (And anyway, few if anyone would get the "yellow stockings, cross-gartered" reference as it is, unless I explained it to them. But *I* will know, and that's what's important).

So I think those are going to be my next "complex" socks.

I think having a stash is good. Even if you're not worrying about the Apocalypse. Because I don't live near a yarn shop, everything has to be obtained from afar, and so being able to dig in and find just the right thing for a pattern has a particular serendipity to it.

***
Speaking of worrying about the Apocalypse: that show I mentioned, it seems that being a mechanical-minded sort is the main skill that they think is needed. (And also the felicitous finding of, oh, things like helium canisters, just lying around)

I don't know, I kind of disagree with that. I *still* think that if society collapsed, those of us living near rural areas - where we could catch fish (and crabs; I learned last week there are tiny crabs in Lake Texoma and though they don't have much meat on them, I'm sure boiled up they'd be edible) and snare rabbits or squirrels and find wild foods and grow our own food would be ultimately more useful than having, say, solar panels. (Not that I'd reject solar panels were they available; it would be nice to be able to run a small lamp for reading at night without having to make one's own candles). But I think in my mind the "pioneer" model, rather than the "Mad Max" model, seems to be the way to survive. (But yeah, you'd probably need a rifle. If for nothing else to scare off those bigger and stronger than you bent on taking fruit you spent a week drying for the winter. Then again, if everyone was working to dry their own fruit...maybe the rifle would really only be needed to fire up into the air to scare off bears.)

But whatever. Maybe I just think that because I have considerable pioneer-style skills but essentially no "Mad Max" skills. (And sadly, I look nothing like Auntie Entity.)

***

The current Clapotis continues to grow. I'm still working on the "increase" section; to do this as a rectangular scarf knit on the diagonal, you increase up to the desired width, then do a section where you balance increases with decreases so it stays the same width, then the last section is more decreasing than increasing to get the second point.



I wound up switching from the casein to wooden needles; for one reason, the endcap on one of the casein needles came loose and I'm going to have to figure out the best glue to reattach it (somehow, I don't think Elmer's - which is itself made from casein - will work). But also, the casein needles were sufficiently slippery that I kept dropping stitches and that is annoying.

These are an older set of wooden needles. I got them from a friend of my mother's. They were HER mother's; when her mother went into a nursing home (Alzheimer's, sadly), Helen knew no one else in her family knit, and so she passed them on to me. There were a number of wooden needles (as well as some wooden crochet hooks, some of which looked handmade), some older plastic needles (red and white; I wonder if they might have been from WWII?) and a few dpns (not a full set) that were red white and blue - all colors on a single needle (a few left, I suspect, from the "patriotic" sets sold during WWII). And there was one set of metal dpns in a small size that I do use regularly for socks. Otherwise, I don't use the needles much. But I like having them.

One of the nice things about good tools is that they can be passed down. I know men who have their grand-dads' hand tools, cooks who have knives passed down in the family (And I actually have a mezzaluna that belonged to one of my grandmothers). My mom has a set of tiny, incredible carved-bone crochet hooks her grandfather made for her grandmother, and a pair of scissors that were her mother's. It's a nice way of remembering the past and feeling connected to it.

And a good tool is a good tool, no matter how old it is. I did take and run these needles through my hair a few times before starting to knit with them to oil them up a bit (the natural oils in your hair are good for wooden needles; I've also rubbed needles down with wax paper to make them a bit more slippery).

It's kind of sad that the "tools" so many of us work with in our careers (computers, lab equipment, etc.) are things that become obsolete rather fast and can't be passed down. (No one will ever say they wrote their dissertation on their grandfather's computer, unless Grandfather was still living and made a loan of his new Macbook or some such).

Again, I think that's why doing low-tech stuff in my free time is valuable to me. That I can use tools and techniques my ancestors would recognize, even if they would be totally bewildered by what I do a lot of the time during my work days.