Maryland Sheep and Wool socks

My mum and I went to the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival this year, and so I picked out a self-striping yarn to make mindless socks from, so that I could knit while I was walking around. I started the first sock as we were walking in on Saturday morning, and finished it on Sunday. I wasn’t able to finish the second sock on Sunday, but it’s done now!

The yarn is ‘Head over Heels: All Stars’, and it’s 75% superwash wool and 25% nylon. It’s number 20 for this year!

Laser tag socks

Sometimes there are these really loud yarns that just call to me, and this was one of them. Something about the bright colors against the black, and the sparkles! The yarn is from Kim Dyes Yarn, and it’s a really nice yarn to work with. Plus I’ve been enjoying the ridiculously bright colors.

As a bonus, here’s the view out of the window at work the other day. I was passing by the window, and all the deer looked up at me as if to say ‘what are you doing here?’

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car socks

I needed an in-the-dark car knitting project, so I pulled out this trusty self striping yarn, got the ribbing all done, and then voila! I was able to knit around in circles for a few hours. It can be really nice to have a simple project sometimes. These socks turned out really big-I didn’t want to waste any of the yarn looking for the next repeat, so since I didn’t have anyone in mind I figured I’d just knit until it was time for the next repeat. Sometimes when I’m taking these pictures I feel like I’m squeezing my huge foot into something tiny, but today was the opposite! The self striping yarn was online sock yarn, and the black is my standard Opal, which I have still maybe a pound of left. I’m hoping to use it up with all the mosaic socks…

The first socks of 2019!

If I had to come up with a knitting new year’s resolution, it would be to decrease the size of my stash. I think of myself as having a medium sized stash-it’s nothing in compared to my mom’s, for example-but I found my pet sheep (see pic) staring at it the other day, looking overawed. So the goal is to use yarns from my stash, which is what this pair of socks is. I’d been given these mini skeins several years ago, and they just sat there unloved until now. The US government shutdown is making it a bit harder to work, as I can’t go into the office, so instead I’ve been forced to stay at home and knit. I cast on this pair of socks on Jan 1.

white sheep and grumpy sheep

The yarn for these socks is Lorna’s Laces Shepard Sock. It came as five mini skeins. To change from color A to color B, I knit with color A, then did 1 row B, 2 rows A, 1 row B, 2 rows A, 1 B, 1 A, 1 B, 1 A, 2 B, 1 A, 2 B, 1 A, and then continued knitting with color B. I think, in hindsight, I’d do at least one more 1 A, 1 B alternation in the middle, particularly with the more different colors. Still, I’m pleased with how the colors blended together, and I think they look okay. I used the same style of decreases after the heel that I’ve been using for the mosaic socks, so that I could see what it looked like without the mosaic hiding it, though it turns out the speckled yarn does a pretty good job of hiding the decreases too! I used just over half the stitches for the heel flap, as I wanted the heel to show up more visually, since it’s in the different color. In past I’ve sometimes been unhappy with how small the toe and heel look when they are the only thing in a contrasting color, but I think these socks are fairly well balanced.

I started knitting when I was eight, though it wasn’t until high school when I really started knitting frequently. I started with garter stitch scarves, and made one for all my family, including aunts, uncles and cousins-it was somewhere around 40 scarves. After that I decided I could move on to other projects, and I eventually settled on socks as the ideal project. I’ve had an in progress pair of socks with me pretty much constantly for the past 14 years. Some years I may have only knit 20 pairs, though I know some years I’ve exceeded 60 pairs. If we assume an average of 40 pairs of socks a year, that equates to 560 socks. So I’m not yet up to 2019 handknit socks, though just give me a few years! I think I’ll officially start counting with this being pair 561.

Imagine these colors as socks

So, in the hurry to finish these socks in time, I failed to take a picture of them. Thus we get to use our imaginations! Picture the dark blue as the top ribbed bit of cuff, heel and toe, and the variegated color slowly changing along the length of the cuff and foot. The variegated is a Cascade Heritage yarn, while the dark blue yarn is Masquerade yarn (80% Bluefaced Leicaster, 20% silk) from Lattes & Llamas, in the color Kasterborous. They were really quite pretty… the two cuffs looked fairly similar, but the foots were slightly different colors, because of the way the variegation happened to work out.

blue stripes

Another pair of mindless socks, albeit with a different heel than I normally use. This is the double riverbed gusset that I learned about in stage 2 of the tour de sock. I'm not quite convinced on how this heel looks off of the foot-the two different bits of the gusset have slightly different angles-but it does seem to fit just fine.

The yarn is das pair, and was way cooler than I'd expected. I bought it thinking it was just a typical self-striping yarn, but it's not! You open up the skein, and there are actually two 50g skeins tied together. They match perfectly, so my two socks match as well, despite there being no repeat of the pattern.

Mindless socks

This is my standard sock pattern-I've made enough of these socks at this point that I can easily do them without thinking. This is also my starting point for designing any sock, be it lace socks, cabled socks, or even mosaic socks. I knit this pair of socks while I was on vacation, and needed something to do while walking along the beach or if the lighting was bad-the one disadvantage of mosaic socks is that I need to reference the mosaic pattern, particularly at the start, and that I can't knit them in poor lighting. 

The yarn is from Gypsy Stardust, colorway: Gypsy Dance
75% Wool - Merino
15% Manufactured Fibers - Nylon / Polyamide
10% Manufactured Fibers - Tencel / Lyocell