When did you first learn to knit socks? On my honeymoon. So three years ago June, or roughly nine months into my knitting career.

What’s the first sock you ever knit? The Crusoe socks from Knitty.com, in a KnitPicks Sock Memories colorway called “Hawaii,” gifted to me by Mia as apropos for said honeymoon knitting. That stranded pattern is TIGHT (and the colors are pretty loud), so I hardly ever wear them, but they live in my drawer as keepsakes and laundry-emergency back-up socks.

Favorite Sock Pattern? Nancy Bush’s Friday Harbor socks. Dude, do you have a pair of socks named for your little town?

Favorite needle method? Two circs. Or dpn’s. I’ll use whatever I can lay my hands on when the urge to cast on strikes.

Favorite sock needles? US #0’s = best fabric and least pooling with semi-solid or variegated yarns, at least for me.

Who do you knit socks for? Myself, and my mother, who has the same size feet. But I’m trying to branch out.

How many pairs have you knitted to date? I haven’t kept track. But I’ve only got four pairs available in my sock drawer, so clearly not enough.

What is on your sock knitting to-do list? 1) Finish the above-mentioned new pair; 2) Finish the singles, beginning with Mom’s other Philosopher’s House Sock; 3) Knit up some new designs and the ones in my Rav queue.

What kind of socks do you like to knit-
Striped? Probably. Haven’t actually tried it yet, but I like stripes, and obviously I like socks…
Colorwork? Yep.
Plain Stockinette? Not so much. The reason I haven’t done any yet is because I want a little more excitement for my feet if I’m going to take the time to knit their coverings instead of buying store-socks.
Cabled? Absolutely.
Lace? Ditto.
Anklets? Well, I like to knit with wool, and woolen anklets don’t make that much sense to me. If it’s cold enough for wool socks, it’s cold enough that I don’t want my ankles exposed. Mom feels the same way.
Knee Socks? I aspire to them. One of the singles is a knee sock.
Solid colors? Yes, especially for cables and lace.
Bright and crazy? Bright, yes. Crazy, occasionally.
Faux Fair Isle (the yarn doing all of the work)? If this means those self-jacquard yarns, I haven’t tried it yet. But I bought some for the first time after seeing these – I stumbled across a similar yarn (at least I hope it’s similar – it’s hard to guess exactly what those are going to do by looking at the skein) in my hometown LYS, which I always try to support on my visits anyway. I also want to use some of the variegateds in my stash in company with plain colors, sort of along the lines of this.

Tag a few sock knitters here: If you are reading, knit socks, and are feeling the mid-week content slump, consider yourself tagged!

Sometimes when my husband goes out of town, I indulge in some quiet, solitary relaxation. Not this time. While Mr. G jetted off to Madison for the Ironman (no, he wasn’t competing in this one, just making some business contacts and helping out), my five solo days went by in a blur.

For starters, I joined a choir. (Actually, we both did, but Mr. G hasn’t been yet.) The funny thing is, it’s a church choir, which is surprising those who know us, because we’re not very churchy. But Mr. G used to sing in college and wanted to get back into it, and his cousin has been trying to get him to audition to join him in this choir. And when he was accepted and decided to commit to it, I thought, why not me, too? We don’t have any other hobbies we do together, and although I have no voice training or experience beyond seventh-grade electives, I grew up in a musical family and my mother has sung in a choral group all my life. So I auditioned, and somehow they let me in as a second soprano. Thursday was the first rehearsal, and it’s hard work! They move fast; there’s a lot of sight-reading; and some of the music is pretty challenging. But I like a challenge. I went home and practiced (the dog barked at me) for the first Sunday service.

Friday night I took it easy and got some knitting done; Saturday was a farm work day for our CSA (we tore out old tomato plants, prepared a new greenhouse, and moved the chicken corral to a new section of the field. I also decided it was time for my puppy dog’s first shampoo. She was getting a little whiffy, not to mention itchy. Miss Lark does not like getting wet, but she took it pretty stoically. The Little Girl has the physique of Wendy Whelan (Lark is somewhat less accomplished in toe shoes, but then I’d like to see Wendy leap twice her height at a dead run to snag an over-the-shoulder frisbee pass in her teeth), so after a few minutes of comical prancing to express her joy that the ordeal was over, the poor uninsulated beastie was reduced to uncontrollable shivering:

Sunday morning it was off to sing at church, then quickly home for lunch and a trip out to exercise the dog and pick blackberries, then off to a fantastic end-of-chemo party for a young student at our school who’s been fighting leukemia, followed by dinner with my in-laws and a swing by my cousins’ to drop off a birthday present for Sam, who has somehow managed to grow to be eight years old when I wasn’t looking.

Today I paid the price for all that frolicking and woke up with a fever and a sore throat. But I did have this to show for my crafting efforts:

That’s the top row of a new quilt project, Little Boxes by Pauline Smith. I fell for this quilt as soon as I saw it:

This is just what I think a baby’s quilt ought to look like: brightly geometric, not pictorial but reminiscent of a brightly painted coastal village, with strong bold colors. I don’t know which baby it’s for yet, but I had to make it. The quilt said, “Behold my many triangles, ye mighty, and despair,” but I said, “Nah. I can figure that out.” I consulted with Mr. G’s mom, who showed me how to stagger the triangles so that the points will be properly secured in the seam allowance without getting nipped off.

I think it’s cute how they make little fox ears where they meet. And now that I know I don’t need to be frightened of them, this quilt top should come together fast.

But first I’ve got to get back to the knitting. There are birthdays afoot!

Thanks to everyone who has responded to the Knit Local idea. We’ve got a new group flourishing on Ravelry – invite yourself in if you’re interested! I envision it as a resource for crafters trying to find local producers, research the origins of various yarns, discuss local yarn substitutions for popular patterns, and spread the word about small companies they love, as well as a showcase of beautiful knits made from local materials. Perhaps it will spawn swaps as fiber enthusiasts from different regions exchange hard-to-find local gems.

While I’m dreaming about the directions Knit Local could take, I’ve also been knitting. I’m thisclose to finishing my Indigo Ripples skirt: only another ten inches of the (seemingly interminable) bind-off row remain, and the quest for a suitable drawstring, should I opt out of the five feet of i-cord.

I’ve got a cabled hat going for my brother’s belated birthday present, in a lovely alpaca grown in our hometown by a farmers’ collective called Honey Lane Farms. This stuff comes in 52 colors, and it’s soft as a baby’s bottom.

Speaking of babies, I’m bog-bog-bogging along on a Baby Bog Jacket for the little man across the street, whose first birthday is next week. I’ve passed the “thumb trick” arm divide and I’m getting ready to toss in a handful of shortrows and a measure of shoulder shaping. All that garter stitch makes good carpool knitting, now that school is back in session.

Oh, school. The year promises a steady rolling boil in all the pots on the stove, requiring precise timing and keen attention, but will be fulfilling if I can keep a cool head while coaxing all the projects to fruition. I haven’t even counted the minutiae I’m responsible for this year on top of the major publishing efforts; I’m just taking it as earning my stripes in this place where everyone gives all they’ve got for the kids and one another and the broader community.

Besides, the sun is out this week, and September in the Northwest, when it’s good, is very, very good indeed. All that blue knitting might reflect inaccurately on my mental state, so here’s a glimpse of what’s next:

I’m not going to blog it just yet because it’s a secret something for a special someone with an approaching birthday who sometimes reads here. But tune in on Ravelry to glimpse the pretty in the next couple of weeks.

Finally, thanks to everyone who’s written with kudos and excitement about my Footlights Cardigan. I’m loving the absinthe-green version just as much as the yellow one.

(Even if I did accidentally knit an extra repetition of the lace pattern on the second sleeve.)

Yesterday’s news (to me) that Butternut Woolens had closed hung heavy in my heart. Shelly’s wrenching post about giving up her farm, her dream, her family’s lifestyle, her sons’ chance to grow up on the land as she did, touched something deep. I’m a rural girl — not a farm girl, but a woods girl, an island girl — who moved to the city, but all along I’ve trusted that the doors are open to go back to that life of forests and fields, seashore and small town, flora and fauna and clean air and quiet.

But it’s hard to make a living close to the land nowadays. My sister-in-law and her husband breathe the struggle every day as they fight for their dream of living off the land in Texas, or Oklahoma, or wherever they can manage to lease enough acreage and scrape by to get their lambs to market. The scope of their vision, their sheer cussed determination to make a go of it in a profession conventional wisdom says is doomed, has always astonished me. But dreams like Shelly’s — a five-acre plot, a modest menagerie of sheep and rabbits, a little business dyeing, spinning, and selling wool — it saddens me deeply to see those die. It wasn’t so long ago that many, many Americans lived this way. I’m not saying I think life was easy for them, or financially stable. I just want to believe that it’s still possible to farm on a small scale, as a vital part of a local economy. I want to live in a world where you can get eggs and milk and produce and wool from your neighbors, because I think it’s a sustainable way to exist, and because I value the bonds that are formed when your children can see where their food comes from and when neighbors know they can rely on each other for help, solace, and celebration.

These relationships exist in the urban world, too, of course. I’ve never had as close-knit a group of neighbors as I do in Portland. I love that we’re part of a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) that lets us help with the farm work now and then. It’s important to me that we can get good food that hasn’t had to travel around the globe to reach our table. But yesterday I started to think: if Local is valuable to me in my food, and in the clothes and goods I buy, why haven’t I carried that sentiment over into my knitting? Why haven’t I committed to supporting small farmers like Shelly whenever I can?

So I’m trying the idea on. At this point, I’m not ready to go totally ascetic and cut international brands like Rowan out of my yarn diet, but whenever it’s possible — financially and design-wise — for me to support a local grower or dyer or spinner instead of buying a more commercial fiber, I’m going to do it. This means buying Oregon stuff when I’m at home (I’m eager to try the Imperial Stock Ranch wool, for instance), but doesn’t exclude souvenirs from my travels. If I can’t achieve a design idea with something local, I’ll still try to favor a small, family-run producer over a big company. With my rudimentary skills in Adobe Illustrator, I made a little button:

Download it to your computer and put it on your blog if you think you’d like to support more farmers and artisans in your own community. (Or use your own superior skills to make a better button, and then come back here and tell me about it!) I might even start a Ravelry group where folks can share their local-origin knits.

The background photo in the button is another skein of sock yarn from Butternut Woolens. I happened to be loitering in Abundant Yarn (a great resource for local stuff – they do a lot of their own dyeing with natural dyestuffs, and they also carry Imperial Stock Ranch and a number of other Oregon products) yesterday afternoon, and I spied this tempting skein of shifting rusty reds in a display basket. I picked it up, and lo, it was from Butternut Woolens. It was one of only a few remaining skeins, and it felt like a sign after I’d been mulling over Shelly’s quandary all day, so home it came with me. The gesture was small, too little too late, but it felt like a tiny step in a worthy direction. Butternut Woolens may be gone, but a beautiful pair of red socks in my drawer will remind me that it existed and meant the world to one woman in Gaston, Oregon. Thank you, Shelly, for the lovingly crafted yarn, and for opening my eyes a little wider.