Oolong knits

General Hogbuffer is one of the most creative of sock's designers out there. Her/his (hard to know) work includes the more standard lace, cable and colour-work socks, but also a lot of funky construction involving unusual geometric shapes. Today I chose Jurga's Broken Jack for eye-candy because, guess what!, I've got the same yarn she used in my stash and I think I'm going to knit myself the same socks. In Broken Jack , General Hogbuffer had the brilliant idea of using self-striping yarn instead of the colour-blocks that the construction suggests. This yields pretty nice results, since the simplicity of the lozenges is surprisingly compatible with the complexity of nearly-random stripes. In addition, in order to avoid working intarsia in the round or knitting socks flat, hard choice to make, but I surely don't recommend attempting intarsia in the round, even in a small project such as socks, this sentence is turning out really long, but here is the conclusio...

When last week, Barack Obama has said the fatal shootings of two black men by police is "not just a black issue - but an American issue", he was right in more ways than he meant. The problem of police brutality in the US is a lot broader than race. It is a problem with a culture that believes the police is above the law and above the citizens it is meant to serve. Actually, the concept that the police is meant to serve seems to be quite absent from this culture. It seems quite innocuous and irrelevant, but when I lived in the US, I knew a Norwegian female university student who got arrested for "contempt of cop". She was shortly released afterwards (it helps being fair-skinned and blonde), without much more ado than wasting a few days of her life and getting quite a scare. Her story was quite common among European expats in that country and I heard a similar story shortly afterwards that had happened to a visiting scholar (a respected foreign university professor ...

Veera Välimäki is a Finish designer I particularly like. Her designs have the sort of understated beauty and elegance that defines Scandinavian design. The Plain and Simple Pullover is one of her free patterns, but I'll probably choose one of her tunic-like sweaters for a future post. They're absolutely lovely.

This is the last post of this series. Whoopee yay yay! In the last post, we're knitting a straight tube that corresponds to the centre part of the foot. At some point we'll have knitted enough as to reach the toe region. How do you know you've reached this region? Put your sock on and check that it reaches the beginning of the big toe. If you're knitting for someone else, you're in trouble... Just kidding. You have two options, if you've the measure of this persons foot, go ahead and use it, if you don't you should get a standard medium sized sock by knitting about 48 rounds (approximately 13cm or 5in) after the end of the gusset, which is about 60% of the total length of the foot. Now we'll start working the toe decreases: Odd rounds : k1, ssk, knit to last 3 stitches of the first half, k2tog, k1, repeat. Note: the first half corresponds to the sole stitches, the second to the top of the foot stitches. Even rounds : knit straight. This sectio...

Rosa Pomar is a little known Portuguese designer. Her most important work is not design, but the research of traditional Portuguese yarn handicrafts which are in the process of becoming extinct, with a focus on knitting. She has written a book about the Portuguese knitting traditions, Malhas Portuguesas: História e prática do tricot em Portugal . The book is, of course, written in Portuguese and not translated to another language. To make a living, she owns a shop , where she sells among many other things, her own yarn brand produced from the fleece of Portuguese sheep breeds using traditional techniques. In addition, she teaches fibre arts and her quilt designs are also pretty amazing. Funny enough, I first heard about them from an Argentinian quilt maker who lives in Buenos Aires. So it seems that even if Rosa is little known, her reputation has travelled far. The pattern I chose for today's candy is Gorro Montanhac . This design is inspired by traditional handwoven blankets f...

We've finished working the heel turn in the last post of this series, so now we'll start working the main part of the foot. First, what we'll do next depends on whether we've used a different strand of yarn to work the heel or not. In the first case, cut the yarn and leave it to weave-in the end later, we'll be working with the main strand from now. Of course, you'll notice that to do this you'll have to slip some stitches around in order for the stitches on the needles to be in the right position. If you have been using a single strand just continue to work with the strand you have. Now, because in the first case we're in a different position than the second, the order we'll do the next section of work will differ, but the result should be the same. The idea is that we have to pick up stitches from the side of the heel flap and join these stitches with the stitches of the front of the foot and the stitches of the heel turn in a single round. I hop...

The beautiful Stephen West is one of the most popular designers at the moment. His designs are very original and full of fun and mischief. He tends to use very risqué colour combinations, but if you're are a lot less flamboyant than Stephen (you probably are), you can always use your creativity and change the colours according to your taste. Stephen is the first to knit his patterns with different colour combinations , so you're just following his example. Metalouse is one of his most subdued and unoriginal (if I may so) patterns. I chose it because it is my favourite pattern of his that is free . I'll probably choose one if his non-free patterns in the future, but I'm going to have a real hard time choosing. Stephen produces a great deal of eye-candy.