Finally! This is my 12th pair of socks for the year and my box of socks is finished!! I decided to end up on a festive Christmas note with some celebratory scarlet socks… they are quite plain, but… LOOK AT THAT COLOUR!! YUMMM!!
I bought this magnificently coloured yarn in Purl Soho in New York City during my recent holiday over there…it is a Koigu KPM 100% merino, hand painted sock yarn, dye lot 2227, but just says “solid red” on the label.
Actually, the thing I’m most proud of with these socks is that I finally managed to work out something I’ve been thinking of for some time… and that is to reverse engineer my sock pattern to be a toe-up design. So happy with this! I did it because the Koigu skein was a smaller one, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to knit two full-length socks, and wanted to make the best use of my yarn. I divided the skein into as close to half as I could gauge (haha, knitting pun), and knitted each until I ran out of yarn. You can’t do this with a cuff down design! As I got close to doing the rib section at the top end, I unrolled the remainder of each ball and measured and was really pleased to see I’d managed to get the two balls within 3m of each other! I cut the difference and joined it to the smaller ball to finish both socks off with an equal amount.
Even with all my careful and clever planning (ha!) … look at this!! I couldn’t believe I ran out right near the very very end of one of the socks like that! In case the picture isn’t clear, that’s about 8 stitches short! DOH!!
It’s funny; I finished these in the middle of a massive heatwave, the worst we’ve had in years! Literally a whole week of temperatures of 39C or 40C. It’s been almost unbearable… Anyway, posing for these photos with the socks on was not comfortable. One of the most common questions I used to get about the things I made was “but is it comfortable?” And in this case, for once I have to admit the answer was a hard NO!
Later on I was sitting in the pool and took the following photo, and had to laugh… now THIS is comfortable! basically the only kind of “sock” I can bear right now!!
And so finally… finally! here is my completed, and very squished up, box of socks… full to brim and spilling over just a little with woolly lusciousness… whooppeeee!
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