They fixed (for now at least) the air conditioning in the building yesterday. (They didn't put in the new part, apparently; just re-set it and turned it back on. Hearing the HVAC guy for your campus say, "Well, it might burn out in 20 minutes or it might keep going all summer" doesn't exactly inspire confidence).

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The most complicated thing I finished over break were the Kimono socks from Judy Sumner's "Knitting Socks East and West."



I used a Dream in Color yarn, the color is called "Lunar Zazzle." It seems to have more color variation than a lot of the yarns in the line and I really like the colors together - sort of a pale turquoise with some bluish purples and a sort of robin's-egg greeny blue.

I really like the Dream in Color yarns: they're nice to knit with and the colors are interesting without overwhelming the stitch patterning.



The yarn also makes a nice feeling fabric - it's not scratchy at all, it's soft and warm and comfortable. (Well, when it's actually cool enough to wear wool socks. It's going to be hot today and I decided to just go ahead and break out all my summer skirts and dresses and wear THOSE instead of slacks over to work. Because a nice lightweight dress is actually cooler than a pair of pants. And I don't "do" shorts for various reasons.)

Here's a close up of the stitch patterning:



It looks complicated but it's really just yarn overs, slip-slip-knits, and knit-2-togethers that do all of that. I always like it when things look more complicated than their construction actually is; there's something I find pleasing on a very deep level when a simple "rule" or "algorithm" leads to something that is complex.

I highly recommend "Knitted Socks East and West." I think it's the most interesting sock book I've seen in several years. It has a mix of toe-up and top-down socks. It has some things that are more like legwarmers than socks. It even has a par of "yoga socks" that leave the soles of your feet mostly bare (for staying in contact with the floor). There are patterns like this one, that just use basic techniques that most intermediate knitters can do, and then there are sock patterns employing Japanese stitch techniques that most Westerners have not seen.

I know Judy Sumner as a long-time knitter; back when I was on the Knitlist she was a contributor there. I'm happy that she has a book out and happy that it's such a good book.

And it's funny how you sometimes "misremember" things. As I was working on these, I got to thinking about the very first pair of socks I ever knit. They were two-stranded socks made of Wool-ease (a worsted weight yarn): very thick and chunky, like boot socks. (I think I still have them; those kind of socks wear like iron). I was thinking that it was Judy Sumner that wrote that pattern but I was wrong, I found, when I looked it up this morning:

Joan's two-stranded Woolease socks.

It was a designer named Joan Hamer who designed those.

Looking at that pattern again - it's on the old Woolworks site (which says it's in the process of shutting down - as of November 2008 - but it's still there right now), I'm reminded of the "early" days of internet knitting: few people had ways of posting pictures. Most patterns were typed out like Joan's pattern, in a type-writer-like font with few embellishments. (Some people had little ASCII pictures they could make; I seem to remember one knitlister who had a rose using the "at" symbol as part of her signature line).  It's remarkable how much things have changed in just over 10 years. Now, there are people who probably WOULDN'T knit a free online pattern unless it came with a clear photo and schematics and a promise of e-mail support from the designer.

It's just interesting to reflect on how things have changed, and really, how fast they changed.