Tag Archives: self striping sock yarn

So many stripes- so few ends

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Y’all. I couldn’t be more pleased with how my self-striping socks turned out. They’re totally cute, totally functional, and totally done, with only a couple weeks’ work and the bare minimum of ends!

You know how I feel about ends (anti), and how I feel about stripes (pro), so these self-striping socks are just about perfect for me- the best of both worlds. I love how the little addition of slipped stitches gave the socks just a smidge more character than regular-old vanilla socks, and I’m beyond happy with how evenly the stripes worked out.

For some reason, I never really trust self-striping yarn to give me evenly matched stripes for both feet. It’s probably some weird deep-seated trust issues or something, but I always assume that self-striping socks will turn out as fraternal twins at best. But, look at these guys! They’re just about perfect!

Such a satisfying little knit!

What’s your most recent satisfying project?

I MADE SOME YARN!

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I usually try to write something clever, or at least do a little funny intro to my posts, but the only thing I can say today is:

I MADE SOME YARN!

YOU CAN BUY IT!

IT’S SUPER PRETTY!

A few months ago (actually, quite a few months ago, because apparently it takes a while to manufacture yarn), I collaborated with KnitPicks to design a couple colorways of their eternal-favorite self-striping sock yarn, Felici, and my yarn has just become available!!

My skeins are the bottom two- the bright, multi-colored ones! They’re both inspired my my (sometimes unrequited) love of gardens and gardening. (They both had garden-y names when I designed them, but I guess the KP marketing folks decided to rename them… who knows?)

The first one, Dragonboat, is a mix of greens and bright red, yellow and orangey-pink, the colors of my favorite zinnias, which always remind me of a summer garden. Not my summer garden, since all my zinnias are kind of sad and stunted this year, but still.

My other skein, Fiesta, is inspired by my neighbor’s garden. She’s a much better gardener than I am, and her yard is always teeming with vibrant dahlias, powder-blue hydrangeas, vivid roses and golden sunflowers.

I can’t wait to see the yarn in person- my skeins are en route as we speak! I think I’m going to start with a classic pair of stockinette socks, but then who knows where I’ll go… hats for everyone? A stripey sweater for the kid? The sky’s the limit!

Grab your skeins here!

Yikes! Stripes!

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I don’t know about you, but I’ve still got socks on the brain.  They are possibly my favorite project to work on when I’m looking for something easy, portable and fun.  But, sometimes having a million plain socks gets boring, so sometimes I mix it up, and use self-striping sock yarn.  Lots of brands carry self-striping sock yarn, and when you buy it, it just looks like regular variegated sock yarn (except that the label will have the word “stripe” on it…duh):

But, when you knit your socks, you magically end up with beautifully striped socks with absolutely no effort on your part!

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Pretty awesome, right?

So, how do they do it?  Basically the yarn company figures out how much yarn the average knitter uses for every row when she makes her socks.  Then, they dye the yarn in row-long increments, so that each row is a different color.  So, for example, if it takes 1 yard of yarn to knit 1 row, they might dye the yarn sow that 5 yards are blue, then 5 yards are green.  This means that in the finished sock, you will end up with a 5 row stripe of blue followed by a 5 row stripe of green.  Pretty clever!