Lavender and Old Lace - Spring into Summer Socks

Lavender and Old Lace Socks

I finished these new ankle socks a few days ago and I absolutely love them. They have a lacy Feather and Fan or Old Shale Cuff - the name seems interchangeable but I've made a scarf and a cowl in that design in recent months so I'll stick to Feather and Fan, which describes the lovely lace design perfectly. 

The pattern comes from the aptly named Stitches of Violet Blog - and it was an adaptation in this wool as I had no plain colour sock wool.  I got the wool in Angela's Design Workshop in Lismore where our Knitting Circle meet every Tuesday evening. It's King Cole brand, Zig Zag 4-ply Sock Wool.

Cuff and Eye of Partridge Heel Flap

This is the first pair of socks I'd made in this lovely lavender and violet self-striping wool. Most of the socks I've made in the past year and a half have either been double knitting acrylic - not good as they fray at the  heel after a few week's wear - or pure wool which promptly felted as I didn't realise it wasn't machine-washable superwash wool. The most successful were made with Lidl Sock Wool, which has been terrific value and made comfy hard-wearing socks that have kept me going for over a year now. 

Showing cuff rib on left

Eye of Partridge Heel & Gusset - soft light

Cuff and Rib detail

Modelling the socks - soft lighting.

I think I'm officially a Sockaholic - I have to have a pair on the go at all times, along with any other WIP I'm  busy with. I used to use 4 DPNs (Double-Pointed Needles) but then about a year ago I learnt how to use the Magic Loop with circular needles and haven't looked back. 

Here are some links to YouTube Video Tutorials on the Magic Loop. It is the easiest method and make socks more portable than ever with no fear of losing a needle. I am to be found knitting away in the passenger seat of the car as we drive anywhere - Cork or Dublin mostly - and hubby Jan is used to it now, having a knitwit beside him getting odd looks at traffic lights! 

I would love to try these in the pattern colours, with a plain sock and a patterned cuff, heel flap and toe. It's just harder to get plain yarn than patterned or self-striping for socks, but I'll get there eventually. 

There's been great intercontinental collaboration in the world of sock-design and knitting lately as Stephanie over at Hookin', Knittin' and Livin' took my photo of the Lismore Cable designed by Cyril Cullen and adapted it to the most wonderful socks - which you can see on her blogpost here - aren't they gorgeous? I hope to make them one day, and you'll be the first to know! 

Meanwhile I hope you like my photos - they show the socks in daylight and under soft lighting taken at night - what a difference the light makes! Of course the daylight is the real deal - and they are a lovely colourway that is currently a favourite of  mine - going with my frilly scarf and my Rathcooney hat and mitts.  By the way, my Ravelry name is LismoreLady if you want to visit me there!

A Local Knitting Hall of Fame Moment - The Lismore Cable

The Lismore Cable - Finished Swatch

I want to share this Aran pattern with you - it's got a lot of sentimental resonance for me, especially this week which is my mother's second anniversary. It's called the Lismore Cable, and was designed  by Cyril Cullen, who is a Knitwear designer. He worked as a Social Welfare Officer in the "Dole Office" in Lismore when I was a child and he branched out into knitwear design for the American market to meet the demand for Aran knitwear. I alluded to him in this post some years ago when I made Shayne a cricket vest.

It was always  more popular Stateside than here at home, despite the fact that the clothes were made from appallingly scratchy pure wool,  very coarse and often replete with twigs and bits of grass and thorns, depending on the living quarters of the sheep.

My mother and many local women knitted for this designer and it was a veritable cottage industry. I guess it was a major success as he went on to leave the Civil Service and become a full-time designer, and he went on to live in Farney Castle in Co. Tipperary where he designed porcelain as well as knitwear.

Lismore Cable swatch blocked 

A friend found some of his late mother's patterns lately when he was doing a clearout, and gave them to me. I was fascinated to find some of the original Gestetner copied patterns and marvelled at the skill of my mother and all those 1960s possibly Desperate Housewives who knitted from home while raising their families in order to supplement meagre incomes.

I can't but think there was a certain irony in the fact that many of the home knitters like my widowed mother would have been clients of Cyril in his role as the Social Welfare officer. I wonder did they fear if they were too prolific in their output of jumpers would it have a negative impact on their pensions? The fear of "having your pension cut" was a very real one for people like my mother, who was a single mother through widowhood in the age when there were no supports other than the Widow's Pension and the Children's Allowance. I found a letter recently from the 1960's where her pension was noted to be 10/6 a week - that's 10 shillings and sixpence, or 55pence in old money, or about 70 EuroCent.

It can't have been easy, as they were under pressure to have the garments done in a certain timeframe, and the pattern sheet carries all kinds of dire warnings and admonishments of the consequences of getting the wool and/or garment soiled. Such transgressions had to be paid for by the knitter, and if a garment couldn't be cleaned to satisfaction the home knitter had to buy it for the cost of the wool. Now I know why my mother was always in a state to keep the wool clean, keeping it in pillow cases in the pre-plastic bag ubiquity era.

Tivoli Twirl scarf

I can remember her winding skeins of wool into balls, while I sat with the skeins on my outstretched arms, or else she used the back of a kitchen chair. It was a time where any extra household income was welcome, before Ireland joined the EEC (later the EU) and discovered prosperity, and certainly before the Celtic Tiger era.

ChaChaCha scarf

I guess many people think that the current recession might lead to a return to those not-so-halcyon days - but I think not, as Knitting is anything but an economic necessity now, and rather a luxury, given the cost of clothing vs. the cost of yarn and labour - so for me knitting is purely a hobby and a labour of love and if I am lucky to sell an item of clothing that's a bonus. I sold two scarves lately via Facebook, incidentally, to a Blogger friend, and got a great buzz out of it, but I don't think I'll be quitting the day job yet!

Some of the Frilly Scarves I made recently

Bowled over - by a Cricket Knitting Challenge

At last - I have completed my latest and most challenging knitting project since I took on knitting some Aran sweaters for a German priest friend in Tanzania in 1983 - the cricket vest for my son has finally seen the inside of his kit bag. I finished it last night and felt inordinately pleased with myself. I had begun to think it mightn't see this year's cricket season and I'm sure Shayne felt the same, but after some sticky wicket starts, I got on a roll a few weeks ago and really enjoyed making it. I'm slightly bereft now that it's done and I am already looking to my next project.

There's something incredibly Zen-like about knitting - it's relaxing and yet it concentrates the mind just enough without being tiring or tiresome - and there's the satisfaction of seeing it progressing through the various stages. The challenge comes in the form of the difficult bits I was unfamiliar with - the V-neck was a new design for me and yet it was very simple once I mastered the art of P2togTBL (purling two together through back of loop, for those knitting virgins among readers).

I had another hiccup when I realised I hadn't got the yellow wool as I had thought to do it in just green and cream - but then Shayne told me the Lismore Cricket Club colours were green and yellow - so I had to improvise the bottom border on the nearly completed back by ripping from the bottom rib to the border and effectively knitting from the border back to the rib rather than ripping the whole back and working back up - luckily the short-cut worked a treat.

So I hope you like the end result - it is incredibly heavy as it is made with about 14 x 50gm balls of Wendy Merino Double Knitting pure wool. The pattern called for Wendy Mode but when I went to the wool shop in Dungarvan - Monica's, a little shop packed to the rafters with wool and related accessories and a knitting browser's paradise - the lady there suggested the Merino instead of the Mode which is a wool blend. As both were the same price I opted for the Merino and it was fabulous to work with, and I really enjoyed making it. I was a bit shocked at the total cost as I am sure it would be cheaper to buy a factory-made jumper (and not in pure wool) for half I paid for the wool - and that's not counting the labour which I never factor in. The wool alone cost €65 - and if I was to make it for sale I suppose I'd have to up that to €100 to cover labour (which would be way below minimum wage rates!). So I will stick to doing the knitting for family and friends.

There is also a sentimental factor in all this that brings me back to my youth, as I recall my beloved mother who spent years of my childhood knitting Aran jumpers for a local designer who went on to achieve international renown on the fashion knitwear front. He was Cyril Cullen, and as he worked in the Social Welfare office in Lismore in the 1960s he recruited local women to work as home knitters when he went into the knitting and design full-time. He is still active in fashion and design and it is nice to think he got off the ground with his team of home knitters around Lismore back in the old days.

I guess that's where I got the love for knitting when I learnt it as a child from my mother rather than in Home Ec in school, where we laboured over sample squares and the dreaded sock with the impossible heel-turn I never could master. Even now I break out in a sweat at the thought of even attempting to turn a heel, though I am determined to give it a go one of these days.

I have an idea to make a mini-jumper for Sofia with the same colours and configuration - I have to try to find a V-neck cable baby jumper pattern now as I am not skilful enough to make up a pattern myself. I have got some great knitting books as presents in the past year and they have great tips on finishing garments and other useful stuff I always winged in the past. Now I am tempted to follow the expert guidance on joining seams and even experimenting with creating patterns, once I get a bit of confidence that my modifications might work!

Watch this space as I will keep updates and sit-reps and other progress reports coming!

The photos show:

• The finished slipover modelled by Shayne,
• The slipover after pressing
• The pattern
• The V-Neck detail
• The wool with the ripped rib
• The work in progress