Well, I’m darned chuffed at how Jeeves has taken off in the last twenty-four hours. When I unveiled the pattern last night, I expected the following people to download it:

• My mother
• My aunt Gwen
• My friend Thomas, who’s just that kind of guy

I was not expecting so many other people to download it, as well. (Heck, I’m not quite sure if my mother even knows about the new pattern — it’s been a busy sort of Monday.)

Truly, I am overwhelmed with the comments and favorites and downloads. In one day, my silly little sock has received almost as many favorites and queuings as Blue Monday has in the past six weeks. I think that deserves a well-timed “Dude.”

Dude.

I’d say the experience today is rather akin to being doused in champers after the end of a grand prix, but that could be stretching the metaphor. You have all been very kind, and I thank each and every one of you. And here’s where I put in my request for pictures of finished products. There will be extra credit for the first pair of Jeeves I see knitted in a particularly riotous shade of purple.

“Not those socks, Jeeves,” I said, gulping a bit but having a dash at the careless, off-hand tone. “Give me the purple ones.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Those jolly purple ones.”

“Very good, sir.”

He lugged them out of the drawer as if he were a vegetarian fishing a caterpillar out of the salad. You could see he was feeling deeply. Deuced painful and all that, this sort of thing, but a chappie has got to assert himself every now and then. Absolutely.

– from “Jeeves and Chump Cyril”

All that said, I do have some pattern notes to pass along. Early adopters pointed out an embarrassing misspelling on the v1.0 .pdf. It’s since been rectified. A few others have asked about gauge.

Oh, here we go.

I hate gauge. There, I said it. I hate it. It’s my dirty knitting secret.

Knitting a gauge swatch pure torture for me, because I must experience the instant gratification of now, now, now, let me start now! Except I’m learning that other knitters (real knitters one might say, with lifted eyebrows and pointed tones) depend upon gauge, and if I’m going to try to pass myself off as any sort of pattern maker, I’m going to have to provide gauge, too. So last night, in a fit of pique (and yet, out of the goodness of my heart), I knit up a gauge swatch. For Jeeves, you’re looking at 22 stitches over 20 rows for a 4″ swatch. However, if you absolutely cannot get gauge, don’t fret. Jeeves is a flexible sock. If you cast on 48 stitches on 3.5 mm needles, you’ll be as right as rain.

Promise.

Another entry for Knitdown 2010: Jeeves, a knitted sock for gentlemen.

Download it for free and take part in the Knitdown.

Eagle-eyed sorts will notice that Jeeves look awfully familiar. I modified the original pattern for a DK weight yarn and cranked out a pair in a gorgeous blue silk blend for my father-in-law’s birthday. The name Jeeves came after my mother gave me metric ton of her Wodehouse and I was reminded how Jeeves came into Bertie’s employ:

“I had found Meadowes, the fellow I had taken to Easeby with me, sneaking my silk socks, a thing no bloke of spirit could stick at any price … I was reluctantly compelled to hand the misguided blighter the mitten and go to London to ask the registry office to dig up another specimen for my approval. They sent me Jeeves.”

So they did.

I think the hardest part of late winter in the middle Rio Grande valley is the yo-yo effect. A beautiful day of sunshine and temperatures edging towards 70° can be wiped out in ten minutes’ time and replaced with ominous dark clouds and snowflakes the size of dinner plates. It’s hot, it’s cold! It’s up! It’s down! It’s hearing “Eight Days a Week” on the radio! It’s a bad Katy Perry song!

It’s demoralizing, waiting out winter’s retreat. Like the showboater in your sophomore year production of Hamlet (the one you still regret kissing at the wrap party, even though it’s been a good fifteen years since), this sulking seasonal Dane is going to rally and then mope and wring every last minute of its time on stage. (“O, I die, Horatio!)

So why not start a sock project?

But not a flimsy little sock done up in 81,000 yarns of sock yarn. Not a sock that will slouch and offer a foot only a thin layer of merino protection against the cold, tile floors in the winter of my discontent.

To hell with that. If I’m going to knit a sock to guard against winter, it’s going to be heavy-duty wool knit on heavy duty needles. So let’s give it up for Mission Falls 1824 triple stranded aran-weight SUPAHWAAAAASH!

This sock isn’t going to take any of winter’s crap. A pattern will be up eventually.

After much consideration, I have decided to knit down my stash this year. It’s not a decision born out of economic necessity or a champagne-soaked New Year’s Resolution. It’s a challenge. It’s a change. It’s … going to keep me the hell out of the yarn store.

I should explain.

My local yarn store is 95% amazing. It has a wide selection of fiber, a gorgeous color palate, a decent selection of books and it just began carrying the much-sought-after Malabrigo this past fall. My LYS is ten minutes away from my office, and for the past few years, I’ve made it a bolt-hole, a place where I could escape when work was getting a little to liberal with the morale crushing. My MO was to pop in, say hello to whichever lady was running the till and then spend forty minutes picking up and putting down skein after skein, until I had made a decision and it was time to go.

I liked to take my friends — knitters and non-knitters — to the LYS and present it to them like Ali Baba’s cave of wonders, stuffed to the rafters with bright jewels.

I really, really liked my yarn store. (Emphasis on the liked.)

It had its foibles, the LYS. There was the one yarn lady who had to pick on any flaw she found in a finished product of mine. I think her goal was to shake a little sense into me about careless mistakes, but she went about it with just a dash of condescension. “Well, if you can’t be bothered to properly weave in your ends, you really shouldn’t be bothered with even trying.” But hey, y’know, she was rarely there and she’d go out of her way to be polite if I turned up at the shop with my mother. I always put it down to her being peeved by my relative youth, and that she had written me off as a hipster knitter, someone who followed a trend blindly and wasn’t going to graduate from worsted-weight scarfs.

And then they hired the other one.

I don’t know who this woman is, or how long she’s really worked there. She cropped up on my radar towards the end of the summer. She didn’t just go out of her way to be picky with her clients, she went out of her way to be downright mean to them. It got so bad that every time I saw her, all I could think of was, “Oh, no. Not Belittling Belinda.”

I don’t know what her name actually is, but Belittling Belinda has stuck. Every visit to the LYS since August has featured her brand of sneering customer service, which features her saying things like, “There’s no such thing as a 7″ double pointed needle” or “I’ve never heard of that yarn, so I just assume you’re making it up” to women who just wanted a little guidance. To be helpful would be to go out of her way.

After my first encounter with Belittling Belinda, I always tried to shut her down with quick and dirty transactions: here’s my frequent shopper card, my debit card, my driver’s license (since she’d always card me, as if I were a knock-kneed seventeen-year-old McLovin’, trying to buy booze with a fake ID). I wouldn’t make chit-chat, the way I did with the other women behind the counter. I’d try to keep my face arranged in a neutral, but pleasant, expression. It wouldn’t deter her. She’d call my choice of color tacky, or make a snide remark about how the button I was buying being “a little too arty” for the likes of her.

I couldn’t avoid her. She was always there.

The last straw came on December 23. I needed one skein of yarn for a last-minute project. One skein of Mission Falls 1824 Merino, one of my favorite workhorses. I found it and queued up to pay. In front of me was a novice knitter looking for a little guidance, and unfortunately, she got stuck with Belinda.

I had enough time to study the woman ahead of me that I made up a little biography for her: she went to law school in the early eighties, had a daughter and a nasty divorce, decided in the early 1990s that she wanted to do something more with her life, and went back to school for a Ph.D. in linguistics or Latin American politics. Taught at UNM or CNM or St. John’s for a few years, until her daughter graduated from high school and went off to one of the minor Ivies, which is when she decided to learn how to knit — not just as a hobby, but as a philosophical and political statement and a chance to take part in a sisterhood of crafters dating back to the Middle Ages. Also, she had noticed one of the Flying Star Stitch and Bitches and thought it’d be a good way to get out of the house during the week. So she learned to knit. (Seriously, I could tell all of this from her wire-rimmed glasses, salt-and-pepper hair and the way she clutched at her project book.)

And she had come to the LYS to support local business, and because someone had said the ladies there were helpful and patient with novice knitters. So she had picked out her project — an ambitious sweater — and had gone to the yarn store for help. And instead, she got Belinda.

Belinda scanned the pattern and said, “You have got to be joking. This is the second thing you’re going to make? Yeah, you may as well give up and go home.” When the woman said she was determined to give it a try, Belinda sighed and started throwing out as much technical jargon as she could muster. “Well, you’re gonna need at least a 42-inch circ, and a set of DPNs, unless you decide you want to go the Magic Loop route, and of course you don’t even understand a word I’m saying, do you? Do you even know what kind of yarn you want to work with?”

The woman held up a skein of Cascade 220 wool in a nice shade of oatmeal. “No,” Belinda said, shaking her head. “No, that’s worsted and you want an aran yarn. And you don’t even know what that means, do you? No, because this is your first project and you thought you’d go into this headfirst without bothering to learn a darn thing.”

The woman said something in her defense like, “well, that’s why I’m here.” Belinda’s response. “Well, you’re wasting my time and yours.” She then shooed the woman to the side so as to ring me up. “Can you believe the nerve of some people?” she asked. But I was trying not to say a word. I was horrified at her treatment of this woman, and I was afraid if I opened my mouth, I wouldn’t be able to close it again until I was forcibly shown the door. I got out my cards and my identification and handed over my one skein of Mission Falls, a fine wool produced in Canada.

“Mission Falls?” she asked. “Do you know you’re just taking money out of the hands of hardworking American farmers by buying from them.”

That did it. My cool was completely gone. I put down my card and my cash, counted to ten in three languages, and then I loaded for bear. I let her know that it was not her job to be picking on my yarn purchases, that her opinion, when not solicited, should not come into play during the transaction. I let her know that in my case, I was happy to buy Mission Falls, because Mission Falls kicks all sort of ass, but that I was also sorry that I wasn’t buying Australian merino, since one of my friends just happened to run a merino farm in New South Wales. I also let her know that from a professional standpoint, I was not impressed with her level of service in a retail position and that if I hadn’t needed one more skein to finish one more Christmas present, I would be walking out of the store empty handed. I let her know that instead of having to show off her incredible wealth of knowledge, and wield it like a cudgel with the novice knitter, she should have said something along the lines of, “Oh, that looks like an ambitious project, however, we’re offering a sweater class in the new year, and it might be the best way to transition.” She could have been helpful, but instead she was cruel, and I was freaking tired of putting up with it.

She kind of stared at me open-mouthed, and I was glad that I had just enough cash to cover the purchase.

And that was it Internet. I was through. After I left, I made a fist-shaking, Scarlet O’Hara oath that, as God as my witness, I wasn’t going back in there again.

And I won’t. Not for a long time. I have a lot of yarn squirreled away, enough yarn to keep me busy for months. So begins Knitdown 2010.

Along about Wednesday it became obvious that the Quarterly Descent into Hell had commenced without my really noticing or getting ready ahead of time.

Intellectually, I am aware the QDiH is coming regardless of any preparations on my part. No matter where I am in the year, I am less than six weeks away from another QDiH. It always hangs over my head like a locomotive* released from high altitude and plummeting towards me. It’s always just a matter of time before before hits the ground at terminal velocity and squishes me like the sorry bag of endoskeletal protoplasm I am.

I knit to survive. Last time around, I started on a very intricate wrap. Previous quarters have seen socks, hats and a cardigan. Complicated scarves are especially good QDiH projects. I have dreams of someday working the Pi Shawl over the January QDiH (which lasts into May). But this time, I got hit unawares.

Stupid, rookie mistake.

When I climbed out from under the dropped box car of overtime and bitter tears on Wednesday, I knew I needed a project, and I needed one FAST! The first thing that came to hand was a ball of New Mexican-raised merino that I had purchased in Taos last year and then never used, and the first idea that popped into my head was a pair of nubby mitts, so that’s what I did. Forty stitches cast onto 3.5 mm needles, 50 rounds of mistake rib, thumb hole, another 15 rounds of mistake rib, cast off. Done.

I am really pleased with how they turned out. They were fast, they were simple, they fit in with my QDiH mental picture, which usually involves a lot of circa 1993 angst, loud music and heavy boots.

Fisticuffs

100 grams aran or worsted-weight wool (Cascade 220 would be great here)
3.5 mm double point needles

Cast on 40 stitches
Round 1: *K2, p2*
Round 2: K1, *p2, k2* to last stitch, K1

Work rounds one and two for 50 rounds, or until glove reaches desired length.

Round 51: Using waste yarn, knit 5 at beginning of next round. Slip these five stitches purl-wise back onto left hand needle. Knit over the top in pattern and complete round.

Work in mistake rib pattern for 15 rounds.

Bind off.

Thumb:
Carefully remove waste yarn and pick up live stitches onto needle — there should be nine total. Pick up and knit live stitches, as well as two stitches between top and bottom of the opening on each side. You should have a total of 13 stitches. Loosely bind off the stitches and weave in loose ends.

Repeat for the second glove.

Rock out.

*Interestingly enough, if my math is right (and I’d like to think that it is) it appears a locomotive’s terminal velocity would be approximately 195 miles an hour. Squish.

I knit.

Adam’s turn around is a lot faster than mine: he can knock out an updated Transformer in the time it takes to watch two Mythbusters episodes and a Boston Legal. My projects are a little more long-term. There’s a lot of picking up and putting down, but I’ve mastered a couple of projects that move in a hurry and satisfy my need for instant gratification. Like, I made a hat, which snowballed into a hat for my little Babo, which turned into a hat for a friend’s regular-sized Babo. And I also made my stupid simple afghan on the mongo needles, which took four skeins of yarn and two weeks of TV time to complete. Stupid. Simple.

But I have finished all those projects and I’m looking to do something new, which was when my friend Scout suggested Yarnplay by Lisa Shobhana Mason as a great project book.

It is great. The photography by itself is drool worthy, and the colors are very mod awesome.

But now I’m tempted by one sweater, the “Edie” sweater, an asymmetrical cardigan, and I have sworn up and down that I’d never attempt a sweater because I’m not that great a knitter.

I think I’m going to attempt that sweater. It will be the long-long-term project, while I have smaller projects going on other needles and Adam thinks I’m absolutely insane, but yeah. I think I’m going to attempt a sweater. My mother swears it’s a worthwhile endeavor, and she still wears the first sweater she knitted some thirty years later, but she says she ripped it out so many times and put so many tears into it that she feels duty bound to wear that sweater to the grave.

This had better be one hell of a sweater, that’s all I’m saying.

Sarah’s Stupid Simple Afghan

Measures about 60″ x 60″ when finished.

Using Lion’s Brand Homespun acrylic in whatever color (4 skeins)
Cast on 8 stitches onto a US 17 (12 3/4 mm) needles
Knit across
For two skeins, knit four, yarn over, knit to end.
For remaining two skeins, knit three, knit two together, yarn over, knit two together, knit to end.
When down to 8 stitches, bind off.

Stupid. Simple.

(Taken from a dish cloth pattern given to my mother by one of her numerous aunts-and-or-cousins in North Carolina in 1986.)

And then Qwest hit our neighborhood with an internet outage around noon, and didn’t bring back the ones and zeroes of life until almost midnight, so my plan was shot, though there was still Airborne and kleenex involved, it wasn’t as awesomely slothful as originally intended. Like Andy from FoxTrot once noted, never mix coffee and decongestants.

I knitted.

Dude, I knitted a lot.

I finished a hat made from Australian merino wool that may have been previously worn by my friend Kevin’s sheep, who’s this big macho sheep farmer near Canberra; wool which was purchased at Village Wools, which means I supported local economies on two continents, and if you don’t think I’ve been smugging that one up, you don’t know me very well at all.

Anyway, hat.

It fits my ginormous head.

And then, because I have an extensive DVD library and was sans-Web, I continued the mindless knitting, crossing the double yellow line of sanity and veering headlong into twee territory with this:

Yep.

And now I’ve got one of my patented stupid-simple afghans going on the Mongo Needles of the Knitting, for when I want to sit in front of the telly and not do a damn thing except watch Star Wars Episode V for the 39,000th time.