Either everything old is new again, or everything new is old again. This is a new tsock, but it isn’t by any means a new idea for me; if you’ve been around these parts long enough it will look strangely familiar to you from the saga of the Rube Goldbergian Contraption, the unwinding of the coral laceweight yarn, and the plans I made for it. Which plans have yet to see fruition in that form. (There was a further hint here.)

At any rate, as so often happens… a few months ago I was letting the old mind wander, and it harked back to this color and this idea and it wandered straight off into a couple of its favorite by-ways:

1. Can knitting do that?
2. Could it make a tsock?

…and when it came back from them it had one word between its teeth, one answer to both, and the answer was… YES.

And so I sent Jennifer a sample of the yarn. And she sent her mind off into one of its mysterious byways, and it came back with this:

… and from that moment there was no doubt in my mind as to how we were going to kick off the 2010 Tseason of Tsocks.

I’m not giving up on doing the shawl someday. But for now, for right now, it’s a Tsock - Tsock #1, 2010.

I give you “Full Fathom Five.”

          Full fathom five thy father lies;
          Of his bones are coral made;
          Those are pearls that were his eyes;
          Nothing of him that doth fade,
          But doth suffer a sea-change
          Into something rich and strange.
          Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
          Ding-dong….
          Hark! Now I hear them – Ding-dong, bell.

(Funny thing about this. Ariel’s song from “The Tempest” has been familiar to me for just about as long as I can remember; but it wasn’t until I was actually typing it up for the pattern, the other day, that I noticed that “of his bones are coral made” is… well… grammatically, syntactically… it’s just WRONG. Not unlike “And damn’d be him who first cries hold, enough!” Must be nice to be Shakespeare and to be able to get away with that sort of thing.

Incidentally, in case you were wondering - it appears that this verse is in fact the origin of the phrase “sea change.”

But I digress.)

The tsock, as it turns out, foreshadows the shawl pretty effectively - that is, I was able to squeeze in all the desired elements, or at any rate suggestions of same. But I trust it has taken them and made them its own - sock gauge being a whole different idiom, after all.

Closer look? But of course.

Following the path of the knitting upward from a toe-tip cast-on, the foundation for the reef is a pile of shells.

Scallop shells, that is.

Above that rises the branching coral, constructed of lace, along very loosely fractal-ish lines. (Because of the way this wraps around the foot, it was all but impossible to photograph it and show the whole panel, so I have frankly mocked it up here - two halves, pasted together through the miracle of PhotoShop. Like an exploded globe, don’t you know.)

This rises up to cover the instep, and the ease adjustments for the heel are built into the lace patterning.

Will anyone be surprised that the scallop shell reappears as an optional element on the back of the heel? I thought not.

Rooted on either side of the heel, two wisps of eel-grass:

Then there is more eel grass drifting through the insertions of the three perpendicular edgings that constitute the ankle.

Five fathoms really isn’t all that deep; a fathom is six feet, so Ferdinand’s father, supposedly, is only 30 feet under - 30 feet of clear water, in the calm after the storm, through which all these things are visible in layer upon layer. First more shells, of a nautilus-ish sort, stirred by ripples of current, and encrusted with some of those “pearls that were his eyes”…

… then a school of tropical fish, each carrying another pearl of its own (this is scaled down from a lovely old traditional stitch pattern called “The Queen’s Edging,” which has always reminded me of leetle tropical fishies)…

… and then a cross-current - more little waves, flowing in the other direction, and playfully tossing more little spiral shells about.

So there she is; - “such stuff as dreams are made on.”

The last files were uploaded yesterday; printing is complete. Tomorrow they pack her up to ship her out.

Happy new year, club members… and stand by to commence mailbox stalkage!

Yes, it’s that time of year again.

Most people rang out the old year on December 31 and rang in the new immediately in its wake. For me, that ringing doesn’t happen until right about now - because right about now is when I wrap up one Tsock Club Tseason and prepare to launch another. Hark, now I hear them - Ding dong bell.

An eventful year it has been, too, the 2009 Tseason. Not as insane as 2008 - no Yarn Drought, thank heavens, and no major life changes of the deflocking kind. But still… here we are tsix Tsocks later, and I flatter myself there’s been some interesting knitting along the way.

We were (toe-)up in flames from the get-go: Fearful Symmetry, AKA the Flying Tiger, in tribute both to William Blake and to my cat Ptolemy.

Sometimes it’s not enough to be metaphysical. The toe of Fearful Symmetry, and its cuff, “burned bright” in the most literal sense possible…

… with little Flame Chevrons in bright orange licking around the feet of the Tyger.

Oh, and he did have feet, all right - and a tail, and a face.

And little fiery pointy bits.

Just like a proper real tiger.

I’m a little behind (so what else is new) on all sorts of things at the moment - public releases of previous club kits, responses to comments, etc. - but I don’t intend to let this one marinate much longer. It is, after all, the Year of the Tiger.

 

And then… we went military and operatic. Some of you are still cursing me, aren’t you, over one detail of this otherwise simple design: The Daughter of the Regiment.

Seriously. Just look at all that stockinette!

How hard could it be, right? At least, that’s what I thought. Right. Raise your hand if you thought the hem of the skirt was a piece of cake.

Anybody? No? Bueller?

sigh

OK, OK. I’m sorry. I’ll try not to let it happen again.

But on the bright side, let’s not forget the sweet little lace-up army boots…

… and the little jacket with its working button placket!

 

But apparently the skirt hem was too sane. Because it wasn’t until the next tsock that we really went for the crazy: Two Cassandras. Crazy subject matter. Crazy structure. Crazy high-falutin’ form-follows-function concept.

Are there still any doubts about Cassandra’s sanity?

All I can say is, there can’t be any about mine. This tsock is neither toe-up nor cuff-down; it isn’t even heel-first or ankle-first or any of the other wacko configurations I came up with in 2008. It’s… it’s… um… it’s Thingie-first. I don’t know what it is. It started with this not-quite triangular flat piece that got folded up into a not-quite cylinder - no, really, I swear I am NOT making this up -

- and it somehow worked outward from there.

It had beaded laurel wreaths, and braided hair, and dishevelled hair, and a hidden gusset…

… and a snake. It also had prophecies and truth tables and a curse.

Seriously. I am not making this up.

Oh, wait. I did make it up, didn’t I.

But it’s real now. So there.

 

At the heart of the matter there’s always… the artichoke. Blessed Thistle, for me, was just plain FUN, from beginning to end, from vestigial bract to thorny leaf-tip.

Yeah, so I got a little carried away with the lace patterns in graduated sizes…

… and OK, so it was a little quixotic of me to fold two leaves under to make a heel out of whole cloth…

…but seriously, now. All those leetle bracts on the stem, with NO ENDS TO WEAVE IN…

… and a puddle of melted butter for the toe? Honestly - what’s not to love?

 

In the bleak midwinter, frosty winds made moan; blizzard piled on blizzard, and the Snow Queen flew off the needles and into the hands of the Flock.

She was cold and frosty, lacy and dainty…

… steeped in allegory…

… and capped with beaded frozen snow.

 

And speaking of allegory… they don’t come a whole lot more allegorical than The Abbey. This tsock cheekily tips its hat to Jane Austen, but its resemblance to persons living is not at all coincidental. For my heavy heavy blogging sins… this one has been on the Flock’s needles for weeks, and I still haven’t published the concordance post that will explain all the in-jokes.

I will, though. Soon.

Meanwhile, there’s a fair amount to chew on just in the knitting.

In fact, there’s plenty to chew on before the knitting, because this tsock inaugurated our experiment with offering a Spinner’s Option. I don’t know yet how regularly we’ll be doing this in future, but I hope we’ll be seeing it again before long. (For my heavy, heavy blogging sins… I have yet to show you the handspun version of the prototype. Which I have spun and knitted, yes I have, honest, and I’ll show it to you when I post the Concordance. Fer realz.)

There are hyacinths, and there’s a Flying Buttress Heel, and a Clerestory, and a Cloister, and a Spindle Rose Window.

And… hang on… wasn’t there something else…?

Wait… wait… don’t tell me.

Oh - yes, I remember now.

GARGOYLES!!!!!!

 
A year of tsocky goodness, take it all in all.

Tsock Flock 2009, you haven’t quite heard the last of it, either. For my heavy, heavy blogging sins… I still owe you a few things. Watch your e-mail for the Free Pattern, as well as the too-long-delayed photo of Tsock #6.

And Tsock Flock 2010, please stand by, because the final countdown to Tsock #1 begins… NOW. In fact… all will be revealed tomorrow.

By the way… as I combed through the past year’s tsocks, in beautiful hindsight I picked up on this from the introduction of Fearful Symmetry:

(Incidentally, it hasn’t escaped my attention that this is the second season in a row to start toe-up with a fiery stitch pattern in a fiery color. Is this going to be a tradition? Y’got me. Tune in a year from now to find out.)

Will she or won’t she?

Heh. Stay tuned.

Better yet… don’t settle for just watching. If you haven’t already, become part of the crazy now; hop aboard while you still can.

Seriously. Do it. Come on. Just click. Right there.

Resistance is futile.

Jo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oin u-u-u-u-uusssssssssssssss.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Anne Chotzinoff Grossman
February 21, 1930 - November 5, 2002

2007
2008
2009

     “What beautiful hyacinths! I have just learnt to love a hyacinth.”
     “And how might you learn? By accident or argument?”
     “Your sister taught me; I cannot tell how. Mrs. Allen used to take pains, year after year, to make me like them; but I never could, till I saw them the other day in Milsom Street; I am naturally indifferent about flowers.”
     “But now you love a hyacinth. So much the better. You have gained a new source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible. And though the love of a hyacinth may be rather domestic, who can tell, the sentiment once raised, but you may in time come to love a rose? At any rate, however, I am pleased that you have learnt to love a hyacinth. The mere habit of learning to love is the thing; and a teachableness of disposition in a young lady is a great blessing.”

Jane Austen,
Northanger Abbey

 
 

Oh, this one has been incubating and marinating for a lo-o-o-o-ong time in the fertile and terrifying back of my brain. And we’re out of Purdah at last, so here she is:

To begin with… have you ever noticed that the front half of your foot looks a little like a cultivated hyacinth? No?

Maybe you just didn’t put enough purple panicles on it.

Now, I will be the first to admit that it is a little fanciful to imagine these hyacinths actually growing on the grounds of the Abbey - given that it’s only March, more probably they actually come from the succession-houses of which General Tilney is so proud - but in fact there is very little about this design that is not fanciful. Besides, it amuses me to contrast the bright vibrant cheerful purple of the hyacinth with the gloomy weathered granite of the building. So indulge me. The hyacinths, then, grow right up to the foundations of Northanger Abbey, and the Abbey’s mouldering grey walls rise dark and forbidding above them.

Mouldering, dark and forbidding? Yes, well.

     An abbey! Yes, it was delightful to be really in an abbey! But she doubted, as she looked round the room, whether anything within her observation would have given her the consciousness. The fireplace, where she had expected the ample width and ponderous carving of former times, was contracted to a Rumford, with slabs of plain though handsome marble, and ornaments over it of the prettiest English china. The windows, to which she looked with peculiar dependence, from having heard the general talk of his preserving them in their Gothic form with reverential care, were yet less what her fancy had portrayed. To be sure, the pointed arch was preserved-the form of them was Gothic-they might be even casements-but every pane was so large, so clear, so light! To an imagination which had hoped for the smallest divisions, and the heaviest stone-work, for painted glass, dirt, and cobwebs, the difference was very distressing.

Yes, well.

I thought about creating The Abbey in that image, but it hardly seemed worth knitting… so I have replaced it with the Abbey of Catherine’s fevered imagination, as fueled by all the delicious horrors of Gothic romance.

Instead of a comfortable gentleman’s residence in Gloucestershire, furnished “in all the profusion and elegance of modern taste,” surrounded by “lodges of a modern appearance,” and approached via “a smooth, level road of fine gravel, without obstacle, alarm, or solemnity of any kind,” our Abbey is modeled after an ancient ruin, mouldering away in the best terrifying Mrs. Radcliffe style, set high and inaccessible on a gloomy wooded hillside, in that semi-Teutonic part of northern France now known as Alsace-Lorraine.

And about this ruin there is much to tell; not all of it apocryphal perhaps. There are those who refer to it as having formerly been a château where the by-blows of German nobility were sent to conceal their parents’ shame. Older legend has it, however, that the building actually began its existence in the early Middle Ages as the Abbaye Franchemontaise; home to the Schnazellines, a Secular Cistercian order whose particular field of sanctified manual labor was the manufacture of fine textiles. They were famed far and wide for their beautifully-wrought threads and cloths of every description, and it is in tribute to them and to their industry that we offer - for the first time - a Spinner’s Option with this sock; in tribute to them and to their founder, the high-minded and erudite Abbé Franquemont.

The irony of this is not lost upon me. As it happens, the Schnazellines were a discalced order, as such eschewing all but the most spartan of foot coverings - relatively unusual for Secular Cistercians, but an unerring reflection of their founder’s eccentric distaste for the production of hose. Spinners they were, and weavers, and as the innovation of knitting became popular in their part of the world it was not unknown to the good lay brothers; but the Abbé enforced a strict embargo on the making of warm stockings, considering the work a waste of time, its products an unwarrantable luxury.

Indeed, along with an unparalleled knowledge of his art and its history, the Abbé Franquemont cherished a number of powerful if not always comprehensible tastes and convictions, among them some curious prejudices in matters not only sartorial but also architectural. How unfortunate for him that he happened to be away on a pilgrimage during the early stages of the Abbey’s construction! for had he been present you may be sure the building would never have been permitted to flaunt its unconcealed Flying Buttresses before all the world. How the good Abbé did despise these new-fangled naked excrescences! Unnecessary; impractical; indecent. (Some contemporary accounts claim that on his return he was actually heard to refer to them under his breath as “sale espèce d’arc-foutant”; but let us fervently hope that he was alike incapable of both the pun and the obscenity.) Buttresses, he averred, like limbs (if not feet), should always be decently covered. Nevertheless, there they were, flying and flagrant and irrevocable, for by that time it was far too late to tear them down despite all the Abbé Franquemont’s fulminations; and there they remain to this day, as the rest of the structure crumbles dismally around them - an enduring monument to one artist’s frustration in the face of Philistinism.

In their honor I have erected a new kind of heel, the Flying Buttress Wraparound Reverse Flap, which rises directly from the sock’s foundation in the best High Perpendicular tradition.

The Flying Buttresses support a Gothic-arched clerestory…

…while the West front - again in tribute to the tools of the Schnazellines’ humble calling - features an elegant rose window whose tracery emulates a fine old design known as the Spindle Lattice.

Rising above, the upper cloister occupies two storeys:

And atop these the roof is edged with… wait for it… terrifying winged gargoyles, poised as for flight.

Such is the “silent, lonely, and sublime” edifice where “Fate sits on these dark battlements, and frowns”; the edifice of which Catherine Morland “expected with solemn awe… a glimpse of its massy walls of grey stone, rising amidst a grove of ancient oaks, with the last beams of the sun playing in beautiful splendour on its high Gothic windows”; a fit setting for the luridly-imagined woes of “the wretched Matilda.”

The Abbey. Ships to the Tsock Flock club starting on Monday.

And in other twisty news….

One advantage of being a spinner?

I no longer have to struggle with the problem of what kind of yarn to use for Jennifer’s birthday present.

Remember that dilemma from a couple of years ago? (Yeah, it’s OK if you don’t. That’s a long time to be paying attention.)

Anyway, now I can make my OWN yarn, so no more agonizing over whether it’s cheap and cheesy of me to use Jen’s yarn, i.e. leftovers from our joint working materials that are supplied by her in the first place at no cost to me, or whether on the other hand using someone else’s yarn somehow implies insufficient solidarity. (Yes, I know that second one is silly, especially when the someone else is a good friend to both of us. Nevertheless, you shoulda seen me worrying about it. Because, you know, I don’t ever have enough to worry about.)

This is the perfect solution, because what better gift for a fiber person than something one has knit out of one’s own handspun?

Of course, the challenge there, if the recipient is a spinner, becomes measuring up to the standard. Jen’s been spinning for coon’s ages, and I though a quick study am way behind her in the seniority department, so instead of worrying about whose yarn to use I now get to worry about whether or not mine can cut it.

Luckily, I had a leg up there, because the yarn I chose was something she had enthusiastically admired when I showed it to her, back when it was newly spun. Over a year ago, no less, which made me feel pretty good after only 6 months of spinning.

If you’ve been around here for a while and have been keeping a close eye on your score card, you may recall that at Rhinebeck 2008 (hey, at least it’s not as long ago as that Jen’s birthday story I linked above) I bought this beautiful merino/tencel from Creatively Dyed:

… and you may also remember that I began spinning it a few weeks later and fell deeply, madly in love, producing some 380-ish yards of this:

…which I loved so much I could hardly bear to let it out of my sight.

Well, I showed this yarn to Jen at Georg’s birthday party (cheer up, the history is getting less and less ancient; that party was only a little over a year ago), and Jen fondled it and particularly praised the plying, and I had me a big proud - that nice little shivery feeling you get when you realize, “hey, fer realz - she’s not just saying that.” So from that point on I pretty much knew it was going to be made up into something for her. Possibly not soon, because I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to part with it. But eventually you run out of room for storing the Petting Skeins, right? and a yarn like that just cries out to be used and to be worn.

Jen’s birthday is in November, shortly after mine (yes, see previous post re schedule, me being perpetually behind), so as usual I cast on right after Rhinebeck. The weather was just getting cold, and it seems that that’s becoming the traditional time of year for my handspun to start whispering “Mobius” in my ears. Nothing loath, I always listen when it does that.

Cast on for a Mobius in a nice reversible pattern, a simple 3-row variant on Grand Eyelet.

I love patterns like that for something like this - anything with either a garter base or an odd number of rows, so it really looks the same front and back. Since the front of the Mobius IS the back, and vice versa, this matters even more if possible than it would with a scarf. (The downside is that you end up doing every other repeat in reverse… unless you’re cagey like me. I don’t mind purling, but I don’t like humongous expanses of it, so when I’m doing something reversible like this, or like garter in the round… I cheat. Any time I have to reverse, I really reverse: wrap one stitch, turn the work, and change directions so I’m working on the RS again. Come to the end of that round, pick up that wrap and work it into the pattern, and nobody the wiser - 99 times out of 100 you can’t see the switch even if you’re really looking for it.)

It was knitting up pretty quickly and looking rather nice, and by the end of the plane trip to SOAR I was well into the second skein and thinking I might actually get it done close to the actual birthday itself. Of course there was NEGATIVE time available for knitting while at SOAR, so except for the odd stitch here and there I didn’t really look at it again until I was on the plane back from SOAR. (Which, incidentally, was how I spent pretty much the whole day on MY birthday, snif, strangled sob, etc. So worth it, though.) Picked it up then and continued working on it, and was nearly at the end of the last pattern rep when it became clear to me that I…

Did.
Not.
Have.
Enough.
Yarn.
To.
Finish.

Not even enough to bind off from right where I was - which I found out the hard way, by trying to do so, falling a good yard (of selvedge, I mean, not of yarn) short of the mark, then spending the next hour or so fiddling with the tension on the bound-off edge to see what more I could eke out, and then spending the NEXT hour or so painstakingly tinking the bind-off and putting that sucker back on the needles.

Sigh.

Is there anything worse than running short of your own one-of-a-kind handspun?

Well, I got home, and the first thing I did was fall into bed and sleep for two days straight.

And then I pulled myself together and I cast about for a solution, and boy howdy did I find one.

I had about half an ounce of leftover white polwarth locks - not merino, but close enough for government work and more fun to spin anyway. I also had a pretty decent supply of tencel in both white and grey. And miraculously, I still had the ball-band from the fiber braid, so I could check the percentage of the blend: 50/50.

Got out the scale, went to the drum-carder, and set to work making a pale grey shiny batt in the same proportions.

Spun it to the same grist and twist.

Thought over all the tricks I’d learned from AmyBoogie at SOAR (see above re: so worth it), broke out the food coloring, and started playing around with a little hand-paint job.

(I don’t seem to have taken any pictures of this process. I am full of BLOGGER FAIL.)

And damned if I didn’t manage to match some of the shades. Exactly.

Of course, since it was dyed after spinning instead of before there was no way I was going to match the frequency of the color sequence; the repeats are a lot tighter.

Under the circumstances, how much did I care?

Not.

Hey, I decided it was a feature.

I attached my new yarn and I started knitting. I finished my poor orphaned little pattern rep. Ah, what the hell, I thought then, and I started ANOTHER pattern rep. I finished that one. I bound off, nice and loose.

And I had about a yard and a half left over.

Surprised I didn’t dislocate my shoulder patting myself on the back.

Here’s the finished Mobius:

The outer stripe on both edges (because of course this is a center-cast-on Mobius) is made from my extra ounce, and everybody knows it - NOT because they noticed and could tell, but because… um, because for the next few weeks I wore the thing myself and I never missed an opportunity to show it off and tell the story.

I have to tell you, this did not tend to make me less fond of the yarn. For a while there it was touch and go whether I would ever block the thing and put it in the mail.

I mean… just look how shiny it is:

Shiny shiny shiny.

So I doubt it will surprise anyone to know that Jen’s birthday present was very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very late.

But she did get it at last. Just ask her. And make her show you a picture, wouldja? She says she loves it and she says she’s been wearing it, but she won’t show me how it looks on her, and it’s driving me crazy.

Boo.

Me again. Back in the saddle yet again blah blah blah. Just when you thought, etc. Rumors of my you-know-what have been greatly you-know-whatted.

Not going to go into a lot of blather right now about all the stuff I’ve managed to miss blogging during this latest fallow period (though, let’s see… my third blogiversary springs to mind, and so does the birthday on which my age and my name diverged for the first time in three years, and so does SOAR, and so does the Rouet Round-Up, and… oh, right, I wasn’t going to blather about all this right now, was I) - I may get around to some of it retroactively and I may not; I cannot be positive which, as dear Hilaire Belloc put it so beautifully, but a girl can dream. Also not going to go into a lot of tedious detail about reasons - I will say, though, that I’ve been unusually swamped with complicated life stuff, even though most of it hasn’t been very event-y, as such. Basically, there’s kind of a recurring black hole going on because of a long-running illness in the family. I hasten to say I’m not the one doing most of the heavy lifting, but even so this kind of thing really eats into one’s personal and even professional bandwidth, if you know what I mean - and I suspect you do. Hence the greatly diminished blogginess; hence the dearth of web-site-update-iness; hence the fact that I am generally and officially behind schedule on just about anything you could name. (OK, OK, not that me being behind schedule is anything new, I know. But still.)

Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about is… one of these running-late things, and because it’s been running late, and because I still don’t seem to be able to kick the Tstealth habit, it seemed only reasonable to offer some teasers about what it’s going to look like… and by “it” I mean Tsock #6, i.e. the final instalment of this season’s Tsock Flock Club.

Because we are doing something new and different and exciting with Tsock #6 - at least it’s new and different for us, and I think it’s exciting.

It’s this.

That, my friends, is sweet shiny superwash BFL top, hand-painted by Jennifer in colorways to match those of the yarn for Tsock #6, which comes with… wait for it… a Spinners’ Option.

Jen has outdone herself yet again, and in the process she has produced a colorway that is not only jaw-droppingly beautiful but also unphotographable.

I’ve done my not inconsiderable best to get the color balance right in these pictures, but I may as well tell you right now: none of them is quite right… and yet… at the same time… all of them are right. (The purpliest ones are the rightest of all.)

To clarify - the kit still comes with our default sock yarn, Jennifer’s Flock Sock, and I made the prototype in that before I even started sampling for the handspun version. But any club member who spins, and who would like to spin the yarn for this sock, has the option of doing it either way or both ways - can get it with fiber instead of yarn or, for some reasonable cost, with fiber as well as yarn. This is known as eating one’s cake and having it, and I’m hoping that eventually, if all goes well, we will start extending the idea to some of our existing kits. Who knows, perhaps making it an option with nearly all our kits? Remains to be seen, but I for one do not find that possibility the least bit horrifying.

Is there a particular reason we are doing it for the first time with this kit?

Of course there is.

Am I about to explain what that reason is?

Not yet. (See above re: just can’t break the Tstealth Habit.) That’d be telling.

But you can be sure it ties in with the theme in some insane and far-fetched way. So what else is new?

Because of all the behind-schedule-ness, actually, I won’t get to knit up much of the handspun prototype until after the kit ships (which I fondly hope will be very very soon - note to self: hurry it up and finish this post and get back to work on formatting the pattern). But I’ve done some sampling and swatching; I’ve spun the yarn (I’m not usually a big fan of superwash fiber, incidentally, but I have to say this stuff is delicious to work with, drafts like a dream); and I’m here to tell you that playing with both - both millspun and handspun in the same colorways and design, I mean - is more fun than decent people oughta have.

The skeins are handspun; the center-pull balls are millspun. The handspun looks a little darker and more saturated - it isn’t the same dye-lot, of course, but I think the real reason is that the colors in the handspun are more blended-looking, because I’m not spinner enough yet to duplicate the pattern of the variegation the way Jennifer laid it out in both the yarn and the fiber. I mean… I mean… wait a minute… of course, I mean I DID THAT ON PURPOSE, and that’s part of the fun of spinning the yarn myself, right? that I get to play with the ways the colors interact.

I’m also not quite spinner enough yet to have spun this as a workable 4-ply (I really love our 4-ply millspun, and as a sock yarn spinner my goal is to emulate that some day), though I have to say I’m getting damn close. So close, in fact, that I actually got gauge with my 4-ply sample! but I decided it was still a little too dense for my taste, so I ended up going for the 3-ply instead.

That’s the 3-ply on the left, the 4-ply on the right. The 4-ply is nice and rounded, and yes, I was tempted. Very tempted. Maybe next time. They both swatch up nicely, I think.

The 3-ply doesn’t have quite the stitch definition of my dreams…

Millspun Above, Handspun Below

… but it ain’t chopped liver either, and I am not unhappy with it.

At all.

A few more teasers; again, these are from the millspun prototype since it’s the only one I have so far.

Do we detect a little touch of the cabled and twisted crazy here?

We do. Oh yes, indeed we do. It’s been kind of a lace-heavy season so far, you may have noticed, and I thought we needed a good strong dose of texture to finish things off with a bang. In fact… well, as you may already know if you hang out on the Tsock Flock Ravelry Group… I went so overboard with the twists and turns and ins and outs on this one that I actually had to invent a whole new system of cabling taxonomy and nomenclature so I could write the directions without going - and driving everyone - insane.

That is, I mean - you know, more insane.

I like a good crazy as much as the next person, but even I have to draw the line somewhere.

For right now I’m drawing it just this side of explaining what all those bits of texture mean. Because after all, I’ve got over a month of teasing and tantalizing coyness to make up for, here.

Stay tuned.