So this is March?
No, I didn’t take the whole month off. In fact the weather wasn’t that nice and I spent the day in conference calls. Got some knitting done during the calls, and several since.
I had a great post in mind about our Valentine’s Day dinner—Braised Beef in Barolo, and nothing says love like cooking eye of round in wine worth more than the current market capitalization of Citibank—and about how I enjoyed my first knitting meet-up at Brooklyn General Store, but a family member, somewhat obsessively private about his/her health, was taken seriously ill, and I’ve been somewhat distracted. The situation has improved slightly since. In the meantime I’ve done a bit of knitting, and I’ve been known to go to work and I’ve spent a bit of time being scratched by the Little Monster.
Our friends A— & J— finally got the call to go to Korea and adopt their new eleven-month-old baby boy. I got a baby hat knit in record time (for me), but now that I’ve seen pictures of him, I think he might be able to wear it once. He’s huge. Cute, but huge. I’m glad I abandoned the sweater. It would have been much too small.
I’ve also been knitting a pair of socks for my Mom’s husband. And knitting, and knitting. Why are there relatively few good patterns for men’s socks? Because it takes lots of yarn and lots of time and conservative patterns are a bit boring. I have discovered that large pattern repeats do make the sock go faster and row counting easier.
In other news, the beard is gone. Looking 55 and distinguished is not preferable to looking 45 and a little weak-chinned. I don’t feel as old as my beard.
March 6th, 2009 at 7:12:48 pm
Why are there relatively few good patterns for men’s socks?
What makes a pattern for men’s socks “good”?
Menswear is usually conservative because men want to wear conservatively styled garments. There have been 2 recent threads on Ravelry about men’s socks, and, as far as I can tell, the socks that men want to wear (and knit for themselves) are basically no different from what they’re already wearing (and knitting). Put another way, they want the standard 2/2 rib sock to be reinvented so it is a standard 2/2 rib sock, but better or more interesting or whatever. Further, it’s important that the sock be “Manly”.
I suggest you get a copy of Charlene Schurch’s “Sensational Socks”. Besides providing basic instructions for socks from the toe-up or cuff-down in a range of gauges and sizes –with a few variations for heels and toes, and instructions for working with 2 circs, or 4 or 5 DPs– she has stitch patterns sorted by stitch multiple counts (is that a knitting term?). When you determine the sock size and gauge, you simply find a stitch pattern that plugs into the number of stitches you’ll have on your needle. She’s included some interesting texture patterns that work well for men’s socks. With this, you’ll learn how to knit a sock, which will free you from needing patterns by other people.
There’s always Cat Bordi’s “New Pathways for Sock Knitters” which will give you some extremely interesting sock, architecturally. I think a lot of guys find the socks are not “manly” enough, which takes us back to what I wrote up there.