2019 Fashion on the Ration Challenge

Laura_Elsewhere wrote: »

Finished my latest pair of ankle-socks with yarn bought with the recent coupon-spend... and guess who's back to the dentist for another series of appts, argh, no, the knitting shop, and I thought I was safe til November!

Pity about the dentist. Do we need to arrange to have you barred from the yarn shop? :rotfl:

Actually, if the shop is any good and you're like me, you'll want to keep them in business by buying the decent stuff from them. Do you have a shopping list on your phone of yarn that you actually need? If not yarn, then needles? (Until recently, mine included "Sock yarn in shades that I can actually wear to work under my suit", but it's currently empty.)

I've been short-sighted since I was 8 or 9, but I had two different pathologies diagnosed last year, out of the blue, newly-arrived, in both eyes - cataracts and astigmatism, neither of which run in the family, neither of which I was expecting at 49...

The chances are reasonably good that eventually I'll have surgery which could result in better eyesight than since I was a child - but there are also reasonable chances of complications and other developments. We have to wait and watch (oh ho ho) - and of course I don't know how bad my eyesight will get before I'm approved for surgery - at present it apparently barely affects my vision, only my confidence...

First - a big hug to you.

Second, please excuse me while I dust off the nurse's hat that's been breeding dust bunnies in a corner for the last 25 years... (Yes, I was a nurse when I left Oz.) You can slap me, if I'm providing too much detail.

You're dealing with two, totally separate problems. Astigmatism is where the cornea - the front of the eye - isn't completely spherical. For some reason, there's a flattening in one part. The variation is usually minuscule, but the effect means that your distance vision will be a bit fuzzy around the edges. You may have lived with an astigmatism for years and just assumed it was your short sight worsening.

Astigmata change over time and may even improve. (Apparently my left eye's improved between my last pair of glasses and these latest ones.) Surgeons can correct it using the same laser surgery techniques that are used to correct short sight, but rarely is it bad enough to justify on its own. These days, you can get specially weighted, soft contact lenses to correct it, if you don't want to wear glasses.

Cataracts involve the fogging up of the lens in the eye, due to some sort of protein deposit/protein damage to its cells (I can't remember which). UV light is considered a causative agent, but hereditary plays a part, too, particularly in younger people developing them but statistically most of us will develop them eventually. (DH's best mate's sister had hers removed in her early '50's, having struggled with them for years. None of her siblings have them.)

The lens is removed and replaced with a perspex one, usually with miraculous results as far as the patient is concerned, since they'll also correct short/long sight at the same time, if they can. For example, following cataract removal in his late 60's, my severely short-sighted dad suddenly didn't have to wear glasses for the first time in his adult life and, from our local beach, could see the mountains on the far side of Port Phillip Bay (something he couldn't recall seeing before).

Back in my day, surgeons would operate on one eye at a time, about 3 months apart, to decrease the risks from any possible infection. The hardest/most painful part is that you can't move one eye without moving the other, so until they remove the bandages you have to sit with both eyes closed or the wound's edge will rub on the inside of your eye-lid. (I learned that the hard way when I had one eye lasered and tried to read with my good eye. Ouch!)

Anyway, I'm trying to get a basic me-sock pattern sorted, using the same needle-size and yarn-weight and stitch-count, etc., each time, so that even if my eyes deteriorate considerably I can still knit socks. These are a good start on the Standard Sock pattern!

Those socks are great. I see you do a "French heel" like I do (Sl1 K1 on the knitted rows).

If it's any help, this is my standard sock recipe for 4-ply yarn on 2.5mm needles. If I need to increase the size, I'll do it it in 4 stitch increments.

Me (UK size 5): CO 60st DH (UK size 11): CO 72st.
Divide between 4 needles - I do 10st, 20st, 20st, and 10st - then join in round being careful not to twist. Work K2 P2 rib for 15 rows.
Change to stocking stitch and continue knitting until 68 rnds (Me) or 72 rnds (DH) are completed.

Divide for heel:

K15 st (me) or K18 st (DH), turn slip 1 and purl back 29st (me) or 35st (DH). You'll have either 30 or 36 stitches on your working needle. Place a marker in the middle of the stitches on your needle. (I hang a row counter from the middle, attached to a stitch marker.)
Count that row as "row 1". For rows 2 to 28 (me) or 36 (DH), work as follows:

Knit rows: *Slip 1 K1, repeat from * to end
Purl rows: Slip 1 purl to end

In the meantime, use a plastic coil needle holder to keep needles 2 and 3 out of the way (and to stop those stitches slipping off).

Turn heel:

Start after you have completed an even numbered (Knit) row.
Slip1 purl until you are 2 stitches after your centre marker, p2 tog p1 turn.
Slip 1, k until you are 2 stitches after your centre marker, SSK, K1 turn.
Slip 1, P until you are 3 stitches after your centre marker p2 tog p1 turn.
Slip 1, k until you are 3 stitches after your centre marker, SSK, K1 turn.
Repeat these two rows, taking in one more stitch each time you go beyond the central marker, until you've incorporated all the stitches from your heel flap, ending with a knit row.

Gusset: Using a latch hook, pick up 16 st (me) 37 st (DH) from the left edge of the heel flap and slip onto a separate DPN. Place a marker (M1) on your DPN (I transfer my row counter to this point) then knit 5 stitches from needle 2. Taking a fresh DPN, finish knitting the stitches on needle 2 and knit all but 5 of the stitches on needle 3. (You should have one DPN spare now or 2 if it was a pack of 6.) With your last, spare DPN, knit across the remaining 5 stitches from needle 3, place a marker (M2) and then pick up the same number of stitches that you picked up from the other side of the flap. Knit across the stitches along the bottom of the flap, then back up the other side to M1.

NOTE: when knitting into picked up stitches, knit through the back of the loop, to make them twist, to get a tighter stitch and thus limit holes.

Work the gusset in two-round increments: Rnd 1, knit. Rnd 2 K to M2, slip the marker, k1, SSK. K to 3 stitches before M1, K2tog, K1. Continue decreasing in this fashion until you are back to the same number of stitches as your original cast on. When working with 5 needles gets a bit too fiddly, redistribute your knitting from 4 needles back to 3. Keep M1 in position, but you can lose M2 at this point.

Work 48 rnds (me) 52 (DH). Needle 1 is the one with the marker.

Toe:

Rnd 1: K to 3 st before the end of needle 2, K2tog, K1. Start needle 3, K1 SSK, k to 3st before your marker, K2tog, K1.
Rnd 2: Slip marker K1 SSK. K until you're back at the marker.
Repeat these 2 rounds until 12 st (me) or 8 st (DH) remain, ending with a non-decrease round. Kitchener Stitch the toe together. (I do it, I can't describe it.)

Cast on the second sock and knit to match.

HTH

- Pip

ETA: Stitch gauge is 7 stitches to the inch.

Laura_Elsewhere wrote: »

I'm going to just quote you, rather than bothering with the square brackets and backslashes

" Do you have a shopping list on your phone of yarn that you actually need? If not yarn, then needles?"

Ahahahaaaa! At the last count, four years ago I have over two hundred and fifty DPNs and two pairs of straights, and since then people have given me at least another 10 sets... and yarn, well acc'g Rav I have over 223 different kinds of yarn in my stash...

So, well, "need"? this is like having a list of chocolate that I actually need, isn't it?

Secondly, the nursey-eye stuff - mwah! You are lovely...
Unfortunately... the astigmatism and cataracts really are sudden and very recent arrivals. My optician here went and double-checked in my previous records from two years earlier and nope, no sign of even the slightest hint in either eye of either condition. My dad mentioned it to our old optician, who retrieved my last eye-test there, five years ago and no sign at all of it. Kerataconus runs in the family so my eyes have always had the double-thorough extra-check-up to look for any sign of corneal or eyeball problems, too. So both conditions have spontaneously both arrived in both eyes in the space of two years... the problem is we simply have no idea what they intend to do, so to speak - they may stay like this for years and years, or they may develop rapidly, or one may do one and the other the other, or one eye ditto and the other ditto... we really do just have to wait and find out. It was only August last year that they were identified so no progress or stasis to track...
No astigmatism anywhere in the family - short-sightedness in Dad, caused by the kerataconus (he had 20/20 vision til it developed in his early 30s) - and the only cataracts anywhere in the family are Dad, again linked to the kerataconus and only arriving very mildly in his very late 70s. So it isn't hereditary - even my parents' grandparents didn't wear glasses and some of them lived to older old-age. Mind you, I have psoriasis which also doesn't run in the family so I am a genetic freak in that way already...!
My eyesight is already poor enough that I've never been suitable for laser surgery - they could improve it but I would still need specs even just for moving around at home, the whole time. Not much point going from strong perma-specs to medium perma-specs!
I've known lots of great results from cataract surgery but also some very sad total failures with worsened vision, and good opticians are honest about it not always working... I just hope I'm lucky whenever it happens, and that I don't have to get to too bad a state before it happens...

I just have to wait, really. No idea if they'll stay just like this or what...

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.

Your sock-pattern sounds a lot like mine - it's sl1-p1 on the wrong side, btw, on the heels, because I hate purling and it halves the number I have to do I use 2.25s with 4-ply as I like the denser result and it's much much harder-wearing. So I c/on 72 but on the 2.25s that works out to my size-6.5 nicely.

How many stitches to the inch do you get? I'm curious. I get 7 on my 2.5mm's. Tension is such a personal thing; we may be making the same tension while using two different needle sizes.

I'm amused at how many other thing you use though - you must have been taught to knit by a modern knitter, with the coil to hold the foot-needles whilst knitting the heel, and the latch-hook for picking-up... I learnt by myself in my 30s from a 1920s Weldon's booklet of my late Gran's, and I just use four DPNs and the yarn, with a needle at the end to sew in the two yarn-ends...

I was taught to knit by my grade 2 school teacher, in 1973, just before my 8th birthday. Everyone was taught, boys and girls. We learned "English style", i.e. holding the yarn in your right hand and holding the right needle from above, then my mum taught me "Australian style, where you tuck your thumb under the right needle, supporting its weight. The remainder of the hold and the knitting action is the same, but the Australian style means that you aren't dropping the needle to make a stitch, so makes it faster and more secure (you don't have to clamp the right needle into your armpit or waist to form a stitch or worse, hold the two needle tips with your left hand while you wrap the yarn with your right).


Using a latch hook also came from mum, they're much more secure when used to pick up a dropped stitch than a crochet hook and you can force them through the tightest stitch in order to pick up yarn. Mine are designed for the bed of a knitting machine; I blagged half a dozen from a vendor at the Knit-and-Stitch Show a few years ago.

These are my notes from the blue socks:
*****
C/on 72 on 4mm and change to 2.25s. Knit 2/2 rib for 18 Rs.
On R18, use last 18 and first 18 for heel, for 36 rows, sl first and alt purls. Turn at 15 left, and k1/p1 after (22).

P/up 19 (11+19=30) and decr on 2nd and alt rounds.
Knit 55 Rs.

Arrange 18-36-18 and decr -4, knit 3 Rs, decr -4, knit 3Rs, decr -4, knit 3rs, decr -4 (four decr in all - pso/k2tog, both times).
Then decr -4 every round until 8-16-8.

Knitted-grafting:
Cut yarn long.
Set up: a. Front knit on, back purl on

Fr p off
Fr kn on
B kn off
B p on
ie whatever you did last time, change it. Never two ons or offs in a row.
*****

My grafting is pretty much the same as yours. I just ran out of time to describe it.

I learned to knit socks in 2006 from a kit I purchased after years of reading the Yarn Harlot rabbit on about knitting socks: one set Addi 8" dpns, 2 stitch markers, 100g of Opal sock yarn and a photocopied handout, that I think also came from Opal. (If you can read German, I think they used to print their sock pattern on their ball bands.) I've knitted so many pairs of socks now that I've just internalised that pattern, with a few modifications (the French heel, picking up an extra stitch in the "corner" of the gusset, twisting the first row of stitches).

One of the things I find really fascinating about knitting is how many different ways there are to arrive at pretty much the same result! I can't use circs, for example, because I can only knit with the RH needle anchored in a knitting-belt, or more usually just stuck into my waist area... but others can't use DPNs... and the range of different ways of doing things, firmly preferred by each knitter.

It's worse than apple pie recipes!

It is indeed! I used 12" long DPN's to knit the collar of my first jumper, when I was 10, and hated them; too many points, in too many directions, all getting in the way AND stitches slipping off. (I don't remember when I got my first circular needle, but I probably would never have finished the collar of another jumper without one.) When I got the sock kit with 8" DPN's, I dreaded using them but discovered that shorter DPN's are much less intrusive - I didn't get spiked once - and my preference is now for 6" ones.

- Pip