Ombre Socks

Those couple of weeks I spent in my reclining chair, watching TV shows (I finally succumbed to Netflix produced Korean shows :) and nurturing my back, I found nothing better to do than study German and knit socks. More about German later, now the socks.

I finished two pairs of socks, one for my husband (still not photographed) and one women's size, probably a gift for a good friend of mine, who has been asking for a new pair of woolen socks.

In order to dye the yarn for the socks, I initially wound it in a double thread cake and knitted a sock blank. Then I dyed the blank in a sort of ombre effect, from bordeaux to dark purple, using my red, bordeaux, brown, purple and grey dyes.

I fixed the dye in the microwave, washed and dried it and then wound it into two identical cakes.

 

The socks are knitted toe up, using my simplest sock recipe, with magic double cast on, fish lips kiss heels and stretchy cast off.

Pattern: Ombre Socks (personal pattern, 58 sts)

Yarn: Alize Superwash, 52 g, hand-dyed 

Needle: 2.5 Addi circular needles

Time to knit: 5 days

I enjoyed the process so much, this mindless knitting in the round, while watching some mindless TV dramas (Crash Landing on You and the one I especially liked - Memories of Alhambra), that I am thinking of repeating the experience with another ombre dyed sock yarn, this time in some yellow, green and blue shades.

New Makes for My Boys

Last night I finished another pair of men's socks - these are for my son. I had two skeins of Alize Superwash 50g in grey and I dyed one of the skeins striped, keeping one of the stripes in the original color. I'm quite happy with how these turned, though it would have been smarter, if I had made the number of stripes even. As it was, I had to cut the skein in the middle of the stripe sequence, to make both of the socks look the same.

The pattern is my usual recipe for toe-up men's socks, only this time I decided to do the afterthought heel. However, next time i knit socks for Alex, I might reduce the number of stitches to 62, as his feet, though long, seem to be a bit slimmer than my husband's and the socks are a tiny little bit wide on him.

Pattern: Toe-up vanilla socks with afterthought heel (personal recipe), 64 sts
Yarn: Alize Superwash, 50 g + 20 g
Needle: 2.5 mm
Time to knit: one week

And this is what I whipped up last night for my husband. I found a free pattern for woven fabric men's boxer briefs and I took out two larger cotton fabric remnants from blouses I have made for Gaby and myself. The polka dot one was my muslin, which husband approved of as for size and comfort, though I doubt he'll ever wear them, and the grey ones I did because I was on a roll and I wanted to keep sewing :)

Though he had initially embargoed the fabric, he actually liked it in the form of finished product. However, for my next men's boxer briefs I intend to buy not very stretchy thin and soft cotton knit fabric in more manly colors :)

Autumn Socks

It is getting cold and I feel like knitting socks again. This latest pair was made out of remnant yarn - I had 40 g of white superwash sock yarn and about 7 g of brown sock yarn, which I distributed for the heels of the socks. No pattern - just vanilla toe-up socks with FLKH.

Pattern: Vanilla toe-up socks, 60 sts
Yarn: Alize Superwash 47 g
Needle: 2.5 mm
Time to knit: 5 days

The dyeing of the white yarn was a random experiment - I put the cake of yarn in a bowl of warm water with citric acid and placed four egg dye tablets of unknown color, which were left from last Easter. As I really didn't know the color of the tablets and could only guess the yellow, the rest looked almost the same, it was pure luck that they turned out to be of the same color family and the end result is quite harmonious (though I'm still at a loss how did the brown happen, I'm sure there were no brown egg dyes, probably a combination of purple and green?)

And two more sock yarn skeins I dyed for my mother to knit them into socks. For both skeins I used low immersion, three color distribution and baking in the microwave oven. To make the socks identical, this time I wound the skein double-threaded and after the yarn was dyed, washed and dried, the skein was separated back into single thread cakes.

The double cake of the blue socks before separation and the two identical cakes of the purple socks after the separation.

Birch Tree Socks

Last summer I transformed a cowl I had knitted out of self-dyed sock yarn, into a double hat.  I tried to wear this hat during the past winter, but it turned out to be very impractical - too heavy, big and uncomfortable on my head. So I decided to salvage the sock yarn and make proper socks out of it. I didn't use any pattern - just my regular toe up socks with fish lips kiss heels, 64 sts on 2.5 mm circular needles, half ribbing for the feet and full 2x2 ribbing for the legs.

The socks turned a bit too colorful even for husband, who loves orange socks, but he claims they are super comfortable and they fit him perfectly, so he doesn't mind the loud coloring. And anyway, it's just socks.

I named these Birch Tree Socks, as the yarn reminds me of birch trees in the autumn, when their leaves turn yellow and orange on a background of white, grey and black birch bark.

Pattern: Birch Tree socks (personal pattern)
Yarn: Alize Superwash, hand dyed, 70 g
Needle: 2.5 mm
Time to knit: 3 weeks

Ayliak Socks

Ayliak is a Bulgarian word of Turkish origin, which designates a very relaxed state of mind, an ability to enjoy life while being unperceptive to external pressure, a state of comfort and relaxation.

I cast on my Ayliak socks as a mindless project to work on during the New Year tv time and then in between sweater projects. Recently I find that my best knitting organization is a single big project and one small mindless project (socks) to relax and gather my thoughts and mojo before starting the next big project.

Pattern: Toe-up socks with FLKH and a small 4-sts cable, 60 sts
Yarn: Alize Superwash, 52 g, hand dyed
Needle: 2.5 mm

The yarn I used for these socks is one of the skeins I dyed, trying to break egg-dyes, probably my most favorite of the batch. I like the variation of the colors, the distribution of the nuances is acceptable.

I didn't use any specific pattern, just my usual toe-up socks with fish lips kiss heel.

True to the spirit of the socks, I didn't care much about the fact that my gauge on the second sock was way off, compared to the first one, and the sock was coming smaller - I just knitted one more repeat of the cable pattern. Thus the socks are not quite identical, but so what :) They look nice and comfy and I'm ayliak :)

Hermione's Everyday Socks

And I finished another pair of socks. I decided to start my Christmas knitting and to make a pair of socks for some of my closest relatives, so this is the first installment into the Christmas socks box. I posed with them shortly before I wash them, block them and put them away for six months.

Pattern: Hermione's Everyday Socks
Yarn: Alize Superwash 60 g, hand dyed
Needle: 2.5 mm
Time to knit: 2 weeks

Hermione's Everyday Socks by  Erica Lueder is a simple, free sock pattern on Ravelry, which creates lightly textured socks. I made these with my usual 60 sts instead of 64 sts as the pattern calls - the texture of the pattern is elastic and the number of stitches should be the same as in plain vanilla socks, IMO. I knit them with my favourite Addi circular needles, using magic loop. The heels are Fish Lips Kiss Heels. The cuff is finished with invisible elastic bind off, using a tapestry needle.

Murder, She Wrote

This is a dyeing experiment I've been planning to try for a long time, as it produces very interesting two-color results. And because my two colors are blood red and black, the end result strongly suggests too much reading and watching of crime mysteries :)

The process - the yarn is loosely wound into a ball, not a cake and is submerged into the first color. The dye penetrates unevenly from the outside to the inside of the ball. After the first color is exhausted, the ball is taken out of the dye bath and let to dry a bit. I intentionally collapsed part of my ball, as the dye wasn't penetrating into the ball and I didn't want to be left with a couple of red layers and all white yarn.

After some significant time of struggle with the mess the collapsed ball had created I rewound the yarn, starting from the outer red layer and exposing the white yarn to the outside of the ball.

Then I dropped the ball into the black dye bath. I used the same water, as it already had the citric acid in it, I only added the black dye to the bath.This time I did not collapse the ball, as I didn't want to turn everything black. I like the light greyish - pink transition section, but for fuller coverage one could dye the entire skein red and then cover only part of it with black.

As I wanted to be certain that the dye was well fixed to the yarn, I steamed the yarn for 20 min, placing it in a strainer above the dyeing pot, filled with clear water.

As the yarn is intended for socks for my husband, I had initially double stranded it, so the final step was to divide it back into two one strand cakes - a very time consuming effort, as the yarn was like a 300 m string of twisted threads. I'm not quite sure why this happens, but dyeing two identical cakes with a two-stranded skein always ends into such a twisted string and it is a big nuisance and very unfriendly to the yarn. If my yarn wasn't superwash, it would probably have ended somewhat felted.
Now on to knitting these murderous socks :)