Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Knitting: Sock Craze 2010

The reason for my latest sock-knitting frenzy is no secret... I have a *lot* of sock yarn.  It seems I love the idea of knitting socks, but I was always so slow at it.  I found out, however, if I lay off the frou-frou sock patterns with the tons of lace, cables, and whatnot, I can actually finish a pair in about five days.

That's actually quite a difference.

So, it's been plain-jane sock knitting as of late.  I get to use all of those pretty yarns I just HAD to buy, and get functional, toasty socks in the bargain.  And seriously, I find most fancy sock patterns to produce lumpy socks with a lot of drafty holes in them, especially when it comes to heels.

Of course, I could always use the sock yarn on my rigid-heddle loom, but unfortunately I usually only buy enough for a pair of socks, and Knit Picks never keeps a color around long enough for me to buy more if I decide I need to.  Yeah, I'm a little frustrated by that.  It would be interesting to see how the Stroll Watermelon colorway would weave up in a shawl or scarf though.  As you can see by my newest sock project, the color repeats are extremely short.  I imagine that would weave up into a kind of crazy pink and green camouflage.


Or how it would look with Watermelon as the warp, and the Carnation pink as the weft?  Crap, now I want to hurry up and finish my stole weaving project in Shimmer Sherry just to try it out.  Which means buying more yarn.  Sigh.

2 comments:

  1. I totally agree!

    I have all of these sock knitting books with tons of patterns, but I found my main problem is that the varigated yarn I'm so fond of obscures most of the patterns I want to knit. It's much better to work on the plain "vanilla" sock and get finished quicker as well.

    It also helps me because I can use the basic sock construction practice.

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  2. Yes, it sucks that the pretty, variegated yarn I'm so attracted to buying is perfectly rotten for socks with any kind of stitch pattern. The only book I've found that's any good with it is "Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarn" by Carol Sulcoski. She really paid attention to working with the yarn. Unfortunately, all of her patterns are top-down instead of toe-up. Considering how I have to customize socks to fit my feet, that really doesn't work for me.

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