2022 Geek-A-Long Sock Academy: Advanced Skills

Hello you fabulous fibermancers. This week got away from me. I swear it was Thursday about 10 minutes ago, but I am informed that it is actually Sunday afternoon and I need to write today’s post. In my defense, I’ve been cleaning up buttermilk from the infinite crevices in my credenza since Friday morning.

For those of you wondering, yes, I do in fact still smell like buttermilk. I have begun to believe I always will. Buttermilk aside, I am struggling today. I slept in late which was nice, but I forgot to take my Adderall right away, and now it’s too late to take it or I won’t be able to sleep well tonight. The end result is aside from a general disinterest in doing anything other than hyperfixating on crafts that I would like to become amazing at but have never actually done before (I’m looking at you, Blackwork Embroidery) and staring aimlessly into the middle distance I am also lacking my usual coping strategies for the current state of the world. Things are pretty bad out there right now. Mabel’s school has gotten rid of the mask mandate and although she still wears one per my insistence, many of her classmates don’t. I don’t know where to possibly start on the vile and indisputably unjustified acts of aggression against Ukraine other than to mention that a great way to support artists/civilians in Ukraine is to find them on Etsy or Ravelry and purchase their digital patterns which put money in their pockets but don’t require them to ship you something.

Basically, today I’m OK, or in any event I’m going to be OK because my biggest problem is that I smell like sour milk and didn’t take the medicine that my insurance covers and that I have easy access to but I’m also acutely aware that most people don’t have it anywhere near as good. Take care of yourselves this week. Give yourself permission to take a break. I’ll try to do the same.

And now with a complete non-transition, let’s talk about socks! This week in sock-school we are looking at some intermediate-advanced techniques to make your color work sock knitting experience smoother:

In this week’s video I walk you through how to hold your yarns with one color in each hand, and how to catch long floats behind your work. Let’s zero in a bit on the floats. Here is a photo of the inside of a vest (Arrrgyle Vest, currently in testing) that calls for long floats of each color:

Anytime you work a pattern with more than 5 stitches in a row of one color, the other should be caught behind your work to avoid super long floats. This is particularly relevant with socks, and there will be some loooooooong floats in this year’s Geek-A-Long Socks. You don’t want to go to all the effort of making a gorgeous sock, just to catch your toes on long floats when you try to put them on! Here is the same photo, but I’m zooming in on a few of those long floats to show you where I’ve caught them:

In the video I demonstrate how to catch that unused color with the working color as you complete long stretches of a single color. The end result is the long float is broken into several smaller floats and stays nice and neatly secured against the back of your work. I find that process MUCH simpler when I’m carrying my yarns with one in my left hand -I’ll work Continental knitting for that color, and one in my right hand -I’ll work English knitting with that color. Like most techniques, carrying yarns in both hands can feel very slow or clunky when you first try it out, but once you get the hang of it is really natural and smooth to work. Once I learned to work with both hands I never looked back. Every 6 months or so I convince myself that today is the day I want to learn to use a knitting thimble, and each and every time I try it I’m simply reminded of how much I like working with both hands.

~Megan-Anne

The Crevices of My Credenza sounds like a late 90s alt rock band XD

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