Men's Knitted Socks

A pair of men's socks I knitted this year in between many other project. I took these photos while we were at Pchelina lake in November, but put off publishing them, mostly for lack of time, until today.

For the socks I used again my usual sock recipe for toe up socks for men, with 64 sts, Judie's magic cast on, fish lips kiss heels and stretchy cast off. I used pre-striped sock yarn by Alize and my 2.5 loop needles. This is my first and one of only two knitted projects I finished this year, the other being a hat, I plan to post about soon - my knitting mojo is still away, mostly for lack of time - the year was super, super busy.

Pattern: Striped Socks (personal pattern)

Yarn: Alize Superwash, 70 g

Needle: 2.5 mm

Time to knit: unknown, between projects

I like how these came off and it was fun to knit them, but next time I use striped yarn, I think I'll make the heel an afterthought heel and keep the stripes, or add a solid color for the heel and toes.

Fire Socks

My third pair of socks this year, dyed with the help of a sock blank. My husband is a sucker for warm colors, especially orange, and has been requesting some fiery socks forever. So, for my third sock blank I chose a warm dark to light to dark transition from dark red wine to dark chocolate, or at least that was the plan.

What I realized once I had finished the painting of the blank was, that this scheme placed the lightest color - the yellow, in the middle of the blank, which would probably work well for a scarf or a hat, but for socks it meant that the lightest color would be at the heel, and this is far from ideal. I debated with myself whether to cut some of the brown and move it to the heel, but firstly I didn't know how much to cut, and secondly - that would have inevitably broken the color transition. In the end I decided to go with the flow and knit the socks as I had dyed the yarn and, hopefully, learn a lesson about better planning next time.

Pattern: Fire Socks (personal pattern, 64 sts)

Yarn: Alize Superwash, 72 g, hand-dyed 

Needle: 2.5 Addi circular needles

Time to knit: one week

Despite the definitely awkward color placement, husband loves the new socks and declares them his favourite. Until the next newer pair of socks, I suspect :)

Yellow Blue Socks

My second pair of ombre socks, which I knitted again as a present for a friend. I enjoyed the process with my previous hand-made ombre yarn so much, that soon I wound a new double-threaded ball of yarn, made it into a sock blank and dyed it with bright blue and orange-yellow color variations and combinations. It did not turn exactly as I had hoped and the ombre effect was a bit spoiled due to some bad planning of the color gradiation;anyway, I still find the resulting socks pleasing.

I knitted the socks almost entirely during our short journey through the country. As usual, it took me less time to make the socks, than to photograph them, but I am happy to be finally able to show them on the magnificent and quite matching background of Cherni Vruh on Vitosha.

The sock blank, just painted and before the fixing of the colors in the microwave.

 The washed and dried sock blank, ready to be unraveled and knitted into a pair of socks.

Pattern: Yellow Blue Ombre Socks (personal pattern), 58 sts

Yarn: Alize Superwash, 54 g, hand-dyed hand-knitted sock blank

Needle: 2.5 mm

Time to make: 4 days

Nalu Socks

I have a new pair of socks - aren't they gorgeous, if I say so myself :)))

Back in December, I dyed a skein of Alize Superwash, trying to recreate my first hand-dyed yarn. I had planed to knit the socks during the Christmas and New Year holidays, but then other projects jumped the queue and the tasty berry yarn stayed put in its new project bag.

The plan was to make the socks a sort of a complimentary pair to the pair of fingerless mitts I knitted with the previous berry yarn. For this purpose I took the cable pattern of the Nalu Mitts, adapted it to my aesthetics, as previously with my fingerless mitts and incorporated it in my simple and trusted sock recipe - 60 sts, toe up, fish lips kiss heels, twisted rib, invisible cast off.

Pattern: Nalu Socks (personal pattern, using Nalu Mitts cable)

Yarn: Alize Superwash, hand dyed, 52 g

Needle: 2.5 mm

Time to knit: two weeks

 

 

My husband loved the color of my socks so much, that now I have made him a promise to knit a pair of matching socks for him. Soon. Probably.

Autumn Socks

I finished a new pair of socks for my husband - nothing fancy, just simple mindless stockinette knitting in the round while watching movies.

The yarn is my tried and true Alize Superwash, hand dyed. For the body of the socks I experimented with a new method for dyeing spots, using a dropper. I think I overdid the yellow in the end and the yarn came out too busy, but on the other hand there is definitely no pooling, which is an effect in hand dyed yarns I try to avoid at all costs, if possible.

As I initially only had 50 g of yarn, I started the socks with provisional cast on and afterthought toes and heels. I later bought a couple of new white skeins of Alize Superwash and dyed a 25 g ball in brown for the toes, heels and ribbing, to compliment the dotted body of the socks. I think the afterthought toes and heels worked well, but I prefer Judy's magic cast on, it gives a smoother form of the toes.

Pattern: Autumn Socks (personal recipe, 64 sts)

Yarn: Alize Superwash, 75 g, hand dyed

Needle: 2.5 mm circular needle

Time to knit: three weeks

Starry Night Socks

My latest pair of socks and the closest I've ever gotten in my attempts to recreate Van Gogh's Starry Night palette. I was knitting these with an idea to gift them to a friend, as I have quite enough hand knitted socks, but I love them so much that I'm keeping them for myself - I'll dye and knit her another pair :)

The pattern of the socks couldn't be simpler - just my usual recipe for toe-up vanilla socks, what makes them precious for me is the color palette - the rich variations of blues, interrupted by starry yellow.

For the construction of the socks I used again fish lips kiss heel and simple 1x1 rib, cast off with Lory's stretchy cast off.

In order to dye the skein, I wound it into a very large loop and made random knots of the yarn. Then I dyed the skein with several grades of blue, using low immersion.

After the blues had been absorbed, I hand filled the white with a solution of lemon yellow, wrapped the yarn in stretch folio and microwaved it for a total of 3 min to fix the dye.

Pattern: Starry Night Socks (personal pattern)

Yarn: Alize Superwash 50 g, hand dyed

Needle: 2.5 mm

Time to knit: 2 weeks

Pastel Colors

I was totally obsessed with pastel colors this spring and though I haven't been knitting much, I did dye and then knit a pair of socks and crocheted a necklace and a pair of earrings.

For the socks I used a new to me yarn, 50% merino and 50% poly-amide. It is thinner than my usual sock yarn and it feels less warm because of the lower merino content. I had bought 300 g of it and dyed 50 g for a pair of socks, so I have 250 g more, which I intend to dye one day into similar pastel colors and make a spring sweater for Gaby.

For now, I only have the socks :) I wound the yarn into skeins, divided into 5 consecutive sub-skeins.  I dipped each sub-skein into the dye until it was exhausted, then added the new dye and dipped the next sub-skein and so on - a very fiddly and long process just in order to avoid breaking the yarn and having to weave in ends between colors. I know, sometimes I do act crazy, but I thoroughly enjoyed the process of continually knitting each sock from a single ball of yarn.

The socks are my usual toe-up recipe, fish lips kiss heels, 1x1 rib with Lory's twisted bind off. There is a difference between the two socks - one is knitted on 2.5 mm needles with 60 sts, while the second was knitted on 2.25 mm with 64 sts and magic loop technique. There isn't however much of a difference between the textures of the two, so in the future I'll keep to my preferred 2.5 mm sock needles.

And while I was still in the mood for pastels, I dyed a few strings of cotton yarn and made a necklace for Gaby. She already wore it and got a lot of compliments (which feels so good to hear!). 

And as it turned out that neither of her pairs of earrings was a good match for the necklace, I made her a new pair of earrings as well. 

Meanwhile, May came, the temperatures rose, we took out the light summer blouses and my plans for the pastel sweater became weather-inappropriate, so I've put them off for now. The transitional seasons here are so short some years, that the boots get changed directly for sandals and spring sweaters become redundant.

Yellow socks

I knitted another pair of socks, with hand-dyed yarn, naturally :)
We took pictures of the socks yesterday, during our hike on Rila. I almost forgot about the photosession and the socks would have stayed tucked away in my backpack, which would have been a shame. Luckily, there were many lakes along our way and we had a very long hike, so almost any time it occurred to me to take pictures, there was a postcard scenery awaiting to be taken advantage of :)

I had 10 g sock-yarn remnants from another pair of hand-dyed socks. As I loved the yarn, I wanted to use it up and pair it with a matching hand-dyed yarn. I decided to play with the yellow in the tropical yarn, so I dyed a ball of white sock yarn in three shades of yellow-orange, using the low immersion twisted skein method. What this means - I prepared a dye bath first with a lemonade shade of yellow, twisted the presoaked skein and dipped it in the dye bath until the dye was exhausted. Then I took out the skein, untwisted it, let it cool and twisted it again. Dipped it in orange-yellow and let it soak the dye. And then again repeated the process with the last shade of color - orange. To make sure that the dye was well fixed, I then heated up again the dyed skein in the microwave for a total of 2+2 minutes.

As both of these yarns - the tropical 10 g and the white 35 g, were remnants from other socks, the resulting socks are short, with small cuffs, but I think the combination works really well and the socks were worth making. I used my favourite recipe for toe-up socks, 58 stitches, FLKH, Lory's twisted bind off.

Pattern: Yellow socks (personal pattern)
Yarn: Alize Superwash, hand-dyed, 45 g
Needle: 2.5 mm
Time to knit: 5 days

Peacock Socks

Yesterday I finished another pair of socks out of hand-dyed yarn. These are for my husband and they were such fun to knit.

The yarn is Alize Superwash, 75% wool, 25% nylon. I wound about 70 g, presoaked the yarn in warm water with citric acid, then squeezed most of the water out of the skein and hand painted the skein. A couple of pictures of the process of painting - first the lighter colors, then filling in with the darker colors.

For these socks I used a new blue food dye, which turned to be bright peacock blue. Frankly, I was a bit skeptical of the color combination, but it definitely grew on me in the knitting process.

Despite the fact that the skein was 4 m long and I tried to randomize the colors, I ended with them kind of pooling. It's not as drastic as with short skeins but still I would have preferred more dispersed color distribution, as in the wound skein above.
The pattern is my usual recipe, toe up, 64 sts, stockinette stitch with fish lips kiss heels.

Pattern: Peacock Socks (personal pattern)
Yarn: Alize Superwash, hand-dyed, 68 g
Needle: 2.5 mm
Time to knit: 9 days