One of my commissions this year was to produce 11 sets of hats and mittens for grandchildren. I started, needless to say, in July and have recently completed them all. I may toss in another one to make it an even Christmas dozen. They will be showing up here for the next 12 days in pictures, and eventually they will all be grouped together in a book, complete with pictures of hats, mittens, children wearing said hats and mittens and directions on how to make everything. Today's offering is the headband and half mitts that I made for Amethyst.

Do you see that blue ribbon?  That is attached to a pumpkin at the Cumberland Fair that weighs 1,169 pounds....and it is still not the world's largest pumpkin!  I volunteered to spin at the Cumberland Fair for my spinning group, the R&R Spinners, and this pumpkin patch was collected around the front door of the Exhibition Hall snoozing away on their pumpkin mattresses.  This nice woman and I agreed that we were dumbfounded both at the pumpkins that we were seeing, and the fact that their are evidently other, much bigger pumpkins somewhere else.  Evidently 2000 pounds is the 4 minute mile of pumpkin land, and it has yet to be reached, but someone, somewhere is pushing the envelope at just under 2,000 pounds.  Imagine something more than 1/3 bigger that the one I am standing next to.  You could solve the housing crises with enough of those, and maybe feed the country a lot of pumpkin pie with the also rans.

And this is me actually spinning inside the exhibition hall.  I am guessing that Joe, the in-house photographer, has just said something hysterically funny.  The shawl I am wearing here, which you can't see very well, is my first entirely handspun yarn and is an Elizabeth Zimmerman Pi R Square from Knitting Around.  I recommend this one to the shawl knitters amongst you since the construction tends to throw the weight to the front, where you want it, and it stays on your shoulders beautifully with no tugging and wrestling.  It is the perfect shawl for spinning.

Here you see my first attempt at the Zimmerman re-footable sock. This is another one of those improvise off of the mistakes as you go projects (see Bag of Tricks) that seem to be my design method of choice. The yarn is handspun from a roving that I got at work (Portland Fiber Gallery or www.portfiber.com or you can buy fiber directly at www.portfiber.etsy.com). It is a hand dyed super wash merino that looked spotty and, quite frankly, a bit unpleasant when in the roving but spun up into these wonderful shifty blue/greens. And as it was a superwash I thought it would be a safe choice for socks for Devan who has a tendency to wash everything with great efficiency which has had resulted in some unexpected child size socks. So I spun it up in my usual fashion right off the roving. If I had been thinking the long thought I would have split the roving lengthwise before spinning, thereby resulting in a uniformish color for two balls of yarn. Instead I ended up with a wonderful green ball of yarn and wonderful blue ball of yarn, both of which were quite wonderful but neither of which was the right amount for more than one sock. First I tried knitting them toe up on the long circular one sock per ball thinking "This will be lovely and eclectic!" And then I realized that they were not only two different colors, but two slightly different weights. So I frogged them both and stewed for a bit. And then I came up with this sock idea. Incorporate a lovely lace pattern and work some of EZ's refootable socks, saving out the heavier yarn for the bottoms of the socks, and the lighter weight for the lacey tops. Brilliant!

This is the first attempt and it looks kind of good, but I don't like that wodgy bit under the ball of the foot. So, today I am going to try out the further design innovation that EZ suggests and do the spiral decrease on the ball of the foot. More later.......

Yesterday I resolved to solve the problem of the wodgy pointy part under ball of the foot. To do this I again consulted Knitting Around by Elizabeth Zimmerman and found a promising solution in the Pinwheel Variation on page 5. Here you see it successfully completed. Isn't it lovely? And it perfectly fits the slightly rounded bottom of the ball of the foot.

And then a pic of the back of the heel where you can see how the slightly heavier blue yarn fits niftily into the back of the heel where you need that little bit of extra thickness.

And then a picture of the lacey front of the socks where the colors are related but not identical...and thereby still eclectic.

And then yet another of me trying to do a ballerina point in order to show the sides of the socks and the clever way in which the blue sole cradles the foot. EZ is a genius. But you already knew that.

I will be posting a pattern under Stuff For You which will explain how I made these socks and how I adapted Elizabeth Zimmerman's method to my particular weight and guage of yarn. But for thorough directions on how to make the sole you should get yourself a copy of Knitting Around. The refootable sock is a single item of the wonders that are included therein.