Yarn, Ho! Mayflower sent me a skein of Wisteria which is destined to become part of an Alice Starmore Fair Isle cardi.  And with it is a pair of lovely handmade earrings. That just absolutely made my day!

Add the truly thrilling news that #1 daughter and Son-in-Law are coming to visit (and maybe #2 daughter as well), and joy can reign unconfined. #1 daughter and her husband have moved east instead of the hoped-for westerly direction, and are still in the frozen north. They will be there for several years, though, so she can go back to school. I hope she will, since her husband will be on a submarine for months at a time. She will need something to keep her amused, and she doesn't knit.

LikeWowMom said to photograph the dull sock already! so here it is:

This color does not show up well, so I will describe it for you. It is a heathery blue, with a lot of purple and teal, but stopping short of variegation. I've done just an inch of ribbing and the top is otherwise plain stockinette. The heel is in the sock heel stitch -- sl 1, p1 on the right side and p on the wrong -- and now that the heel is finished I am back on the sleeve needle.

Well, I tried to make it interesting. I am very busy right now, just short in fact of overwhelmed, so I do not expect to make any more socks than this one pair in Sockuary, but the next pair I do make, I will try to make more interesting. Stopping short of the beaded socks that are going around the web, because I am way too Nanna for that. I learned that expression from Knitting by the Bay (http://www.knittingbythebay.prettyposies.com/), and am probably using it wrong.

Speaking of making things more interesting, a wonderful book for this purpose is The Tap Dancing Lizard. It has lots and lots of charts for big and little intarsia patterns you can throw in when you want to jazz something up. I am not sure that it is still in print, but it's worth a trip to the library. I picked it up when I was doing the cuff of the sock, thinking I might add a little pattern, but resisted the temptation. Before I decided to do so, though, I was able to consider Chinese characters, small repeats from several African traditions, a nice little Welsh dragon, and the word "frolic." It may be that there were too many choices...

It may be Sockuary at the knitting blogs and Juneuary in the weather forecast, but it is definitely January at the gym. That means there are lots of people there. New people. People who read the directions on the treadmill. People who have made New Year's Resolutions.

This reminds me that I am not a neophyte at the gym any more, and should probably quit being lazy and doing the same exact workout that I was doing when I started. I think it was challenging then, but now it just gives me a chance to read magazines.

I have learned many things at the gym, including who Jen and Brad are, how to hairspray a ponytail, and the surprising fact that one's goal in shopping for clothes should be to look young, skinny, and affluent (the article used those exact words. I am not making these things up). Sometimes I take in copies of The Nation or Sojourner or Newsweek and leave them in the magazine racks, but they always disappear. This is either because readers get all engrossed in the news while on the elliptical trainer and take them home, or because the nice people at the gym feel that it lowers the tone of the place and throw them out. I don't know which.

But that is the thing about resolutions: most of the new people at the gym will not be there reading Cosmo and Lucky next month. They will have given up their resolutions and quit. That's why I like goals better. I have nine goals for this year. Some I have scheduled, for summer or for Tuesdays or Sundays. Others I work on every day. Others I can take steps toward, knowing that at some point in the year they will be completed. My knitting goals are under #8, my fiber-related goals, which include two sweaters and two quilts.

This is obviously not an ambitious goal. However, I have to leave room for the inspiration of the moment. You never know when a scarf or sock or slipper might beckon irresistably.

The two sweaters are settled, but I am still planning the quilts.

#1 son's quilt is the highest priority. I hope to have it finished by April. We are thinking of using this pattern:

This is the type of quilt known as "stained glass." I have never done this kind before, so it will be a learning experience, which is of course always good. The medallion shown here would go in the middle of the quilt, with borders which are also yet to be determined. If I can figure out what I'm doing with this quilt by the end of this month, I should be able to make it by #1 son's birthday in April.

The other quilt may be another table runner. I have a pattern for a very cool Christmas design which I have been thinking of making for some time. It is fairly elaborate, but small enough that I could work on it during the summer, when it is too hot to think about bed quilts.

The other possibility for the second quilt is one of the UFOs I mentioned yesterday, the teacup quilt. As my daughters were growing up, I made them lots of pretty dresses, and I used scraps from each one to make an appliqued teacup square like this one.

A couple of years back, in my brief Bad Girlz quilting stage, I put the blocks together. I even sandwiched the front with batting and backing. I set it aside for later quilting. You can see it below, in a very unclear picture taken with my toy camera. Though it is not very clear, it is clear enough to show the Bad Girlz sashing.

Bad Girlz quilting involves slapdash folk-art cutting and sewing, as though you don't own a ruler. A friend from my book club does it, and I admired her quilts and took it up for about two weeks.

The result was a Hallowe'en table runner, which I finished last October and now quite like, and this quilt. The contrast between the Good Quilter applique and the Bad Girlz setting may be too much. I may need to take the whole thing apart, buy some new sashing fabric, and do it again. This may be why this is a UFO instead of a beloved completed quilt. Hallowe'en may be the only time I can really like Bad Girlz quilting. I'm just not really a Bad Girl. What can I say?

Tout le knitting blog monde is doing a sort of survey where they tell what brands of things they use. It seems rather dull to me, but I want to be cooperative, so I will try a few.

I use my own homemade shampoo bars made from Sunfeather's natural shampoo base. Let me know if you ever want the ecological reasons for this. Mentadent toothpaste. I have Ralph Lauren sheets and vintage linen pillow cases. I drink tap water, being lucky enough to live in one of the few places in the country where one can do that. 

No, I was right. That is boring. It would be boring, too, to show you my dull sock. It is not boring to knit the dull sock, and I am looking forward to wearing it, but it is not something to take a picture of. Pioneer women were expected to make four pairs of socks a year for each family member -- usually including eight to eleven children -- and also for any servant or slave they might have about the place. Although, I suppose, if you had servants you could get help with your knitting. In the course of my work at the History Institute one year, I calculated that a woman in these parts in the 1830s who worked a full day, 6 days a week, could expect to spend a total of five months each year dealing with fibers. In the absence of eyelash yarn, self-striping sock yarn, and colors like Lotus Blossom and Wisteria, did they get bored with the whole thing?

While cleaning out my crafts cupboard, I found -- or had brought to my attention, since they were never lost -- a couple of UFOs. Not Unidentified Flying Objects, but UnFinished Objects. They differ from WIPs (Works In Progress) in that at some point we got bored with them and set them down and never picked them up again.

Here is one, a crocheted thing composed of 4-inch medallions in the Carnaby Square pattern. The idea with this is to crochet several hundred of these little motifs, block them, sew them together, and thus create a beautiful throw for the bed. My bedroom is decorated in a very romantic style, with Pre-Raphaelite prints and antique furniture, and this will be perfect at the foot of my bed, if it ever stops being a collection of little crumpled white things.

There are also two quilts at some stage of progress. One is a finished quilt top, with the batting and backing sandwiched to it, pinned and waiting for basting. Another is not-nearly-enough pieces of flannel, cut and waiting in a tin for enough more pieces of flannel to join them so that it can actually become a quilt.

I can't do either of those until I make #1 son's quilt. It is his turn. He wants a plain blue quilt with a Celtic knot in the middle, one of those "stained glass" quilts. I have never made such a thing, so it is still in the incubation stages while I find a pattern or a book or something. And then there is the sweater I am planning to make with my Christmas-gift yarn. And the mittens, socks, and slippers waiting in a mental line. And, you know, I never did finish my blacks for that performance -- I'll have to do that before the next concert.

This is how things become UFOs. They lose their spot in the mental line and have to wait for an empty moment, a time when we can say to ourselves, "Now, what shall I make next?" and hope they spring to mind.

Well, this way I know I will not run out of things to make.

Another of my goals for this year was to return to my family history project. This began some years ago when #1 daughter did a project for National History Day on "An Immigrant Family." She sent letters to family members and posted questions on the internet, got her information, did her project, won at the regional level, and was finished.

But the responses to her queries kept coming in. I was working at the time as Education Coordinator at a history museum, and it was natural for me to continue the research -- I was poking my nose into lots of families, so why not my own? Over the past couple of years, though, I have neglected the project. This year, it got back onto my goals list. Inspired by Sighkey's xanga (http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=sighkey), and knowing that -- at least for me -- scheduling makes it much more likely that things will actually get done, I determined to devote some time on Tuesday mornings to the project.

So it was perfect when, last night, I got a call from a charming lady in Alabama who told me that there seemed to be a family member of mine buried in her family cemetery.

You might think that this would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but this is actually the second time for me. The first person who contacted me with this news knew how my family member had gotten there. He had died on the grounds of the ancestral home in question (there was a war on at the time) and the residents had been so kind as to bury him. The lady from Alabama and I are going to have to do some research to figure out what my kinswoman is doing in her plot.

Here is the beginning of a dull sock. It is being knitted in the same heather blue as the grunge mittens, and will probably end up just as grungy. I am resisting the temptation to add intarsia or cables or anything else, because the whole point is to have something dull to knit when I need respite from the interesting Hopkins. I feel sure that I cannot work on Celtic fretwork accurately while poring over old family letters and census records. A dull sock on a sleeve needle, however, requires no attention until I reach the heel.

Do you notice the sleeve needle? That is really the reason for the picture, since the dull sock is -- well, too dull to have its protrait made. The sleeve needle, however, is a wonderful thing for those of us making socks and mittens, as well as those making sleeves. I'm told they are hard to find, but it's worth the search. You can stick it in your purse, unlike a sock on dpns, and work on it while waiting for things.

Horrors! I seem to be a bandwidth thief!

Except that I don't know how I became one, or how to stop it. I only know how to do automatic things at xanga. I don't know what my server is, how to download or upload, or what a bandwidth is. So if I have inadvertently stolen your bandwidth, please feel free to take it back, and accept my deepest apologies.

Super Pokey and Christwarrior are even now trying to help me reform, or at least figure out what I did wrong.

Until I have reformed myself, I will attempt to distract you with a new picture of Hopkins. I have decided to continue this fretwork (from Alice Starmore's Celtic Collection) all the way up the front. I'll do the neckband in the variegated Autumn yarn. But I haven't decided about the back or the sleeves. The obvious thing would be to match the front, but I am tempted to make them all fretwork.

I promise you I am deeply ashamed about the thievery. If you have advice on that subject, or on the important question of what to do with Hopkins's sleeves, I will appreciate it greatly.

One of my goals this year is to make up my mind about whether or not to change churches. In pursuit of this goal, I am visiting other churches between now and Ash Wednesday. I began with the church nearest my home -- I mean, I can almost see it from my door. I like walking to church, I like staying in my own neighborhood, I vote there. It seemed like a comfortable choice in all those ways, but -- it is a different denomination. It is a Methodist church.

Denominations are odd. Why have so many flavors of church, after all? Both Methodists and Presbyterians (that's me) are part of the group we rather smugly call "mainstream Protestants." And yet we have historical differences, differences in style of worship, and differences in doctrine. These punchlines to the old joke "How many ___ does it take to change a lightbulb?" seek to encapsulate those differences:

"Presbyterian: None. Lights will go on and off at predestined times.

Methodist: Undetermined. Whether your light is bright, dull, or completely out, you are loved. You can be a light bulb, turnip bulb, or tulip bulb. Church-wide lighting service is planned for Sunday. Bring bulb of your choice and a covered dish."

Actually, we Presbyterians usually tell that joke like this:

"How many Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb?" "Change?!"

This may say somethng about how hard I am taking this question of whether or not to change churches.

But there is more to it than that. Calvinist Augustus Toplady, the guy who wrote "Rock of Ages," had a serious quarrel with Wesley (the Methodist). He said, if I cannot by free will cure a toothache, how can I possibly by free will cure my soul of sin? Wesley was arguing the Methodist position, that people could freely choose salvation or just as freely refuse it. The argument over predestination between these two descended into personal abuse. Toplady called Wesley a sly assassin and Wesley called Toplady a chimney-sweeper. Those who call for a return to civility in public discourse just haven't been paying attention in history class, that's all.

Since I am not at this point contemplating a change of denomination or even necessarily of church membership, but only a search for a place in which I can be happy and useful on Sunday mornings, I am focussing on style of worship rather than theological issues. I had never previously attended a Methodist service, so the first step in my visit was to put on a dress and hose. You will never be less welcome in a local church because of the color of your skin, but blue jeans or bare legs can definitely do it in some denominations.

Half the hymns were Christmas carols, which I found a little disconcerting, and they didn't sing all the verses, which kept me on my toes. They "trespass" rather than "debt" in the Lord's Prayer, say "Good morning" rather than "The peace of Christ be with you" in the Passing of the Peace, and sing the Doxology to a different tune, but I navigated these potential mine fields successfully. No one stared at me during the hymns, which was nice.

Then came the Blessing of the Prayer Shawls. This church has a knitting ministry. The knitters meet every week and knit while praying "Father, Son, Holy Spirit." This sort of meditational knitting was new to me. The completed shawls were blessed and then sent off to people in need of comfort for one reason or another. My fellow knitters will understand my chagrin at the fact that the shawls, while they were carried up to the front of the sanctuary, were not displayed in a way that allowed me to appreciate the yarn or identify the stitch pattern. Oh, well.

Here is an article I found explaining the Methodist Prayer Shawl ministry -- not for the church I visited, but the concept seems to be the same: http://www.messenger-inquirer.com/news/kentucky/7976434.htm

The sermon was good. I enjoy a good sermon, myself, and the pastor actually touched on an experience of her own when she was thinking of leaving a church. I am not superstitious or even mystical, but I appreciate a good ironic message, too.

There was a sort of receiving line at the door of the sactuary, and the pastor went to hug me. Then realizing I suppose that she didn't actually know me, she shook my hand instead and asked my name. On learning that I was a first-time visitor, she sent me to the "Welcome Table," where a nice man gave me a mug. This was definitely a first for me.

So my first outing in the scientific search for a church was successful. I came home and began a sock, thus making it Sockuary chez Fibermom, too, and also got a good bit more done on Hopkins. I am now to the point where I need to do shaping, and will have to do a bit of calculating to make sure the pattern keeps going properly. I am using the shaping from one sweater and the color patterns from a couple of others. Someday I will just make a sweater or other garment entirely according to the pattern, or at least make all the decisions about it before beginning, instead of having all these midpoint refigurings to do.

My craft cupboard is now a thing of beauty and a joy forever (Keats) or at least decent and in order (1 Corinthians). I even took pictures, which I will post once they are out of the camera. That is the trouble with housekeeping, of course -- the results are fleeting, so you have to enjoy them in the moment. Mayflower and I have a little yarn swap underway -- I will be pleased to have been able to contribute even in so small a way to the absolutely gorgeous sweater she is making. The grunge mittens are finished and Hopkins is just perking along, so I now must decide whether to go ahead and make the cabled mittens I had originally planned, or join the Sockuary and make a pair of socks. There is also still another pair of slippers needing to be knitted.

Really, I agree with Elizabeth Zimmerman that all those little wooly things should be knitted in the summer. They are small, so it doesn't make you feel hotter to work on them when the weather is too sultry for a lap full of wool. And, as Zimmerman points out, mittens knitted while cold hands are crying out for them tend to be skimped because you're hurrying.

However, when I am doing something complex like Hopkins, I like to have something simple to turn to when I get tired of complexities.

The thing that I am finding most complex in my life right now is my church membership. My family joined the church I now attend (and I have to say "I," because my menfolk will not go with me any more and my daughters are in different states) because it had excellent preaching, a strong commitment to education and community service, and a fine music program. There were five choirs, and we had someone in each. I became an elder and all of my kids were very active.

Then we had a change of pastor and a change of direction. My kids would no longer attend with me. And I spend less time there myself, and am less happy with the time I do spend there.

If you are unhappy with your grocery store or hairdresser or mechanic, you change to another. If you are unhappy with your family, you stick with them and do all you can to work it out. So the question for me, I suppose, is this: is a church really a "church family," as we always say, which you cannot leave without great upheaval? Or is it just a community group which can be entered and left depending on your level of satisfaction?

One of my goals for this year is to make a decision. Either I stay with my current church and commit myself to it -- and stop complaining -- or I find a new one. So I am planning to visit some other churches. There are two others of my denomination within reasonable driving distance. There are three others in my neighborhood. And there is at least one other where I know a lot of the people and would feel at ease. The three groups do not, unfortunately, overlap.

Silkenshine linked to these fine knitted projects from Women for Women: http://womenforwomen.org/bazaar.html#BZSL  It's a worthy cause, and they have nice knitted things at reasonable prices.

She also suggests that it could be Mittuary rather than Sockuary. Either way, I will now finish the saga of the sock and mitten. On Thursday I gave you a link for the tricky bit of the heel. If you are making a mitten rather than a sock, though, there is no tricky bit. You do your ribbed cuff, knit a little stockinette, and then begin the thumb gusset. (The British TV show Coupling uses the word "gusset" in a way that suggests that there is something indecent about this word. All I can say is that I have no idea what that might be. In clothing construction, it is a perfectly innocent word. However, if this word has rude overtones where you live, you could also use the term "gore" for this part of your mitten. And please explain to me what "gusset" means, because I think I am missing that whole set of jokes in Coupling.)

Start the thumb gusset with an m1. That stands for "make one" and means you pick up a stitch between two stitches. Unless you have a pattern going on in your mitten, it doesn't matter where you start it in the round, because you are going in rounds and this is the first shaping you have done. Wherever you do it, that is where your thumb will be. Now knit clear around again and m1 before the first m1. K1 directly above the original m1. M1. You now have 3 more stitches than you did before. Knit one round plain, then do another increase round: m1 right before the last m1, k3, m1. Keep doing this -- a plain round and an increase round -- till you have a gusset of the size you want. I normally do 4 increase rounds. With the original m1, that means I have increased 9 stitches.

Now here's the thing about the numbers. You can increase more or less than this. Mittens for little children might be fine with no gusset. More plain rows between the increases give you a more elegant look. And obviously, it makes a difference if you are using laceweight merino or rug yarn. However, if you are planning to make two identical mittens (always a good idea -- Elizabeth Zimmerman recommends going ahead and making three since one will probably get lost), you must remember just exactly what you did with the gusset.

I solve this problem with the number 4. When I make a plain basic mitten in ordinary wool, I knit 4 rows before beginning the gusset, and do four increase rows. Since I always use 4, I have no trouble remembering. If 4 works for you, great. Otherwise, write down what you end up with on the first mitten, so you can do the same on the second one.

You may have noticed that these instructions rely on your being able to see your m1 stitches. If you have trouble with this, as you may with very fluffy yarn, you can use stitch markers, count, or do the thumb gusset in a different color or pattern (a traditional touch that probably helped with the whole gusset question).

Having finished the gusset to your satisfaction, knit across those 9 or however-many new stitches with a scrap of yarn and keep going with your mitten. When you finish the top (just like a sock toe, unless you normally do something exotic for your sock toes), go back and pull out the scrap yarn and put those stiches on a couple of dpns. Knit up your thumb and finish it off just the same way you did the top of the mitten.You are now through with your mitten.

If you don't like the scrap yarn, you can put the thumb stitches on a holder and cast on an equal number to replace them before continuing with the hand. In that case, you put the stitches from the holder onto your dpn and pick up the stitches across the cast-on bit in order to get the stitches for the thumb. Some people even put the hand stitches on a holder and do the thumb before continuing with the hand. It doesn't matter. This is Liberty Hall.

Now you can do both socks and mittens reliably without having to follow a written pattern. The great benefit of this, in my mind, is that you can use up scraps of yarn, try out new stitches, or fit in intarsia pictures of wolves if you feel like it.

My husband had to be at work at 5:00 this morning, so I was up at 4:15 cooking his breakfast and grating palm sugar for his coffee. Am I not a good wife? He has spent every evening of the past week working on my car, so I could have it for my Saturday morning errands, so he is also a good husband.

But this does mean that I have a couple of extra hours today. It is the perfect opportunity to clean out my crafts cupboard. Then I will be able to spend the rest of the day knitting without feeling slothful.

I went roaming through the Yarn, Ho! blogring today, and found all kinds of new people. I can't get all the way through it, because some of them don't have a ring-link (or at least not one that I can find), and some of them don't seem to have any yarn content, but it was interesting. It was like going outside one morning and finding that a new development has been built at the end of the road and you suddenly have all sorts of new neighbors. I have only been in the ring for about 6 months myself, but there used to be only about 5 of us, and I was subscribed to everyone. So I mostly just read my subscriptions, because that already makes it hard to get the house cleaned before work. But I will have to get around the ring more often, I can see.

And, new neighbors, if you are reading this, will you please put the webring link where I can find it? I would like to see everyone. I would also really like it if you would tell us about your yarn adventures. I suspect you of secretly knitting cool stuff I might like to try, but not telling, even though I show you everything, even my grunge mittens. Thank you.

Now, if there actually were a new development built at the end of my road, it would be great if I could communicate with my new neighbors that way. I guess this is the rough equivalent of putting up a sign that says, "Hello, new neighbors! If you happen to read this sign, please forgive me for my dreadful little dog who occasionally escapes and steals neighbor dogs' toys, and will you kindly not drive too fast because there are kids who play in this road. Thank you."

It may be Sockuary, but I am still knitting mittens. Here is a link to the Yarn Harlot, who makes lovely Latvian mittens: http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/

I would not put that much effort into mittens, because we lose them at such a rate, but I like to look at hers.

It is #1 daughter's birthday today, Son-in-Law's graduation day from nuclear chemistry school (whatever they call that), and #2 daughter's first day of classes.

Dweezy says they are calling it "Juneuary" where he lives, it is so balmy. But Natalie (http://knitting.xaviermusketeer.com/) says it is Sockuary, so I will give in to the temptation to discuss socks. (Go check out her scarf, too -- it's very pretty.) CheriM (http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=CheriM) also has posted her snazzy sock's picture.

Feebeeglee asked about using garter stitch for the heel of a sock. I'm thinking that it might be too stretchy, but I have never tried it. I normally use the Sock Heel Stitch. I don't know any other name for this stitch, or any other use for it, either, although I guess you could make a cell phone cozy out of it if you wanted to.

As you recall from our last thrilling installment, you have a cuff and have knitted to the point at which you must decide whether it is a sock or a mitten. Now -- for a sock -- you make a heel.

To make a heel, you knit back and forth on one third of the stitches. Purl all wrong side rows. On the right-side rows, knit one, slip one, all the way across. Knit the edge stiches on every row. Continue this until you have a square. You can tell it is a square by folding it diagonally. If it is a square, it will fold into a tidy triangle. Many people just do 2 rows fewer than the number of stitches, but I find that having to stop and count gets in the way of reading, while making sure that it's a square doesn't. Up to you.

There you are with the cuff, and a nice little knitted square. Now you turn the heel. Here is a photo tutorial of turning the heel:

http://www.royea.net/sockdemo2.html

This is the part that people think is hard. I would say that it is hard the first time you do it from written instructions. However, it seems to me that all the complex things people do in order to avoid turning the heel are harder, after you have figured it out once. What is more, all the supposedly easier heels look and feel distinctly inferior to the good traditional turned heel. Have someone physically show you, if possible. Otherwise, be brave and bold and try it! Be mentally prepared to frog it a few times if necessary. Once you have done it a time or two, you will find it easy.

You know I am opinionated. I say, if you can't turn a heel, buy your socks!

Here is #1 son's mitten. He wanted it loose and grunge-like, and I have done my best. If it were longer and had a heel, it would be a sock!

Both my boys are home with stomach flu, so I am spending my non-work time with them. Mostly saying things like "Lie down! If you are too sick for school, then you are too sick to be rampaging around like that!" After one of these speeches, #2 son walked carefully into the kitchen saying "See how quiet and peaceful I'm being?" and threw up on the floor. I should still be able to finish the second mitten before it gets cold. Then maybe I'll make some socks...