Hand-spun, Hand-knit Socks Are The Answer

(no matter what the question is!)

As previously mentioned (right here in case you missed it), for whatever reason, Kodiak Island has decided not to participate in Spring or Summer. While many knitters are showcasing their linen tank knitting poolside in the sun, I am writing now at my desk in wooly hand knit socks, wool trousers, a fleece undershirt with my Tecumseh sweater on top, wearing a bring fuschia Carhart hat. Also, I have a fire in the fireplace.

It is July!

Instead of complaining, which I am precariously close to doing, I am trying to keep focused on creating things that feel warm, and soft, and joyful. After my last happy knit in a round, woolly worsted weight yarn, I decided to head in a different direction with my next cast on and I spun some sock yarn. Before you think I was in sock yarn deficit, with nothing in stash, I should offer a clarification. If I live to be 312 years old, doing nothing else with my time here on earth than knit socks, I will still have much sock yarn to bestow upon my loved ones. I should also be clear about my TBK sock pile. Just as I have a TBR pile of books To Be Read, I also have a stack of TO BE KNIT (TBK), and the sock TBK pile is crazy. I kind of need to pause for even further clarification—-or maybe defense- you see I have more than 18 single socks on needles. When I got to number 18 I stopped counting. The obvious question is: why did I not pick up one of those instead of spinning more sock yarn for a new pair I socks?

There are many of you I can actually hear right now hollering at me, so I will stop and address the elephant in the room, because those folks I know are saying: MEL THAT IS NOT THE OBVIOUS QUESTION HERE! Alright, alright. Captain Obvious is asking: WHY SO MANY SOCKS ON NEEDLES?!

I was trying to avoid that one, actually, but there probably is no other way to quiet some of you than to explain. That way I will be able to get to the real point of this story, which is the discussion to be had about handspun, hand knit socks. And that, my friend is a topic I really want to explore, and so I will pause momentarily to answer the question: Why so many socks? And yes, I hear others yelling HOW so many socks?!

The TBK sock pile came to be this way because I said to a friend that I could knit 12 pair of socks before the end of the year. It is sort of a challenge now, between us. And yes, there is a small wager attached.

The socks would have to be newly cast on after 1 Jan and finished, with ends woven in, by the last minute of New Years Eve.

They had to be socks in my size, no baby socks allowed, and no knitting a pair for my husband and then trying to claim it as 2 pair because they were so big. I know me. I might try that angle. So socks my size only. And that should be a huge motivation! Self imposed, friend -approved, REQUIRED selfish knitting.

They would have to be an actual pair, though we worked out a few parameters that creatively defined “pair” such as I could make “opposites attract” type of pairs, or 2 siblings from the same skein sort of pairs. But now I am digressing from my initial digression so let me try to get back…

12 pair didn’t seem daunting in January. I mean, 24 socks is 1 sock every 2 weeks. 2 socks a month. In February I knit 2 sweaters. For myself, so they were adult sized. One was sport weight and the other was a color work fingering weight. I knit both of these as procrastin-knits. Before you shake your head and sigh, I know some of you will cast on a new project just to get out of knitting a current WIP you have.

January 15th I was all “Oh my gosh, are you kidding? This is not even going to be hard! I am sooooo winning this bet.” I realized on 31st of January that the challenge was going to be my downfall. What is it with the little tubes?! I knit 2 sweaters in a month just to avoid them!

In the month of January I cast on 3 pair of striped socks. The yarns and colors are AMAZING!! After a few days knitting each they somehow got tucked into a bag, inside of a bigger bag, inside my beautiful woven basket and in a closet in the guest bedroom. They were there until I pulled them out yesterday for the sock census I took to report to you. Even the census was not completed! I did mention that I stopped at 18, right?

So there were 3 counted self-stiping, lol, no there were 4. I just looked at my notes. 4.

I cast on a pair of socks inspired by Annie, the owner of Far North Yarn Co in Anchorage. She was knitting My Girl Friday socks in this stunning blue yarn, and so I bought the same yarn in a pink color because, no joke, I do not own a single pair of pink socks. I worked the cuff 3 times before being satisfied. I am currently on round 7 past the cuff portion. So if you want to knit this sock with me, do let me know and we can start a group. Don’t worry, you will catch up to me in no time flat. So there’s number 5. I am going to text Annie right now and see where she is…I will keep you posted on her progress as well.

Small, but meaningful

The joy and delight derived from each of these tiny balls of fiber is mind-boggling!

Numbers 6 and 7 are decadent cast ons! My dear friend Stephanie, who owned and operated SpaceCadet Yarn, recently closed her shop. She had a wonderful sale to celebrate her decision, which she wanted everyone to see as a positive. I grabbed several skeins of her Aurora fingering weight yarn which has 20% cashmere and makes for decadent foot apparel. I cast on the Hibernal Sock pattern by Summer Lee for one and Petty Harbour by Rayna Curtis. Petty Harbour is a free pattern I believe, and Hibernal costs $5.00. Summers’s patterns are well written with a lovely conversational tone, and definitely worth skipping a latte at the local coffee shop to offset the purchase! Am I the only one that uses that knitting math? Anyway, those socks were both off to a soft, cashemere infused, decadent start. And there they remain.

Staying on the Summer Lee bandwagon for a moment or two more, our friends socks 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 are also begun in patterns by her, with the 2 closest to completion being among them.

8 is Cider House socks knit in A Homespun House sock yarn set with an additional yarn from Skein Yarn deep stash. In this example I told myself: “using deep stash will be incredibly effective to spur me on to getting these socks on and then off the needles!” It is the sock designated as “closest to the finish line”, or cast off edge if you like. Almost 1 point to Gryffindor…

Number 9 on the Has Potential Hand Knit Sock List is My Modified Scattered Pearls sock from Summer’s “Hello Sailor Sock Set.” The pattern is a multi-sock pattern with 4 different patterns inspired by nautical things. My version, when complete, will have a textured leg portion, and instead of the afterthought heel, I am working on a heel flap to transition to the texture on the top of the foot only and stockinette on the bottom of the foot. Sounds good, huh? It will be!

10, 11, and 12 are from Summer’s first book The Sock Project, a book that made me laugh out loud many times. I know, I know, you think it is a sock knitting book, but that is its disguise! It is a book that lets me remember how fun it was to be a kid when I was…with a bunch of sock advice and patterns tossed in to round it out. You know, I am going to reach out to Summer and see if she will visit the podcast to chat about knitting. Feel free to send her a message to support this idea!

Now sock 13 is a WONDERFUL knitting adventure, and as I look at it here in my lap, I am glad I picked it up to keep me company while we chat, and to also act as a beautiful, small lap blank-et. There was you hint friend! This sock is being knit from a sock blank, which until a couple years ago I was clueless as to what that was or how it worked. And to help you not be stymied and at a loss like I was I am just going to describe this as it is such a lovely and interesting way to prepare yarn! The blank is a segement of knitted fiber, a machine knit “blank” about 8, 10, maybe 12 inches wide and at least 36 inches long. It arrives to the dyer a true blank canvas, and this dyer Hedgerow Yarns worked her magic on it, basically dying the fabric with swirls and speckles of magenta, spruce, cobalt, lime, and a soft rose color. So imagine a long towel like thing with fun colors painted on it that has a little dangling loose end. That loose end is the starting point for fun! you tug it a bit and then the bland begins to unravel…it unknits as you knit the sock! This blank is a DK weight and ever so smooshy. As I am here playing with it, trying accurately describe it to you, I am confused as to why I haven’t gotten much further on this because this is so enjoyable. You pull, pull, ppp-uuuuu-llllllll the working yarn and the knitted row of the blank goes, pop, pop, pop, as the material shrinks, and the stitches come together, creating new rounds and the sock grows! It is the illustration of balance, or dues and balance sheets. I may get back to this!

Alright, number 14! I have knit this pattern 6, maybe 7 times over the past dozen years. It is Socks On A Plane by Laura Linneman. They are toe up with a simple cable detail on the outer, or pinky side, of the sock. These are a free pattern on Ravelry with over 5k projects made from it. My first pair was knit in String Theory Yarn, the Caper base in a wonderful, wonderful green. I loved every stitch of them. I still have 1 of the original socks left, and tucked away into my knitting memory box, which is a literal box, not a metaphor. I looked back into my journal from 2012 and enjoyed reading about this project. These were my first ever pair of socks! My entry about the day I finished them and went to a beach in Poipu with my family to get pictures of my finished socks. I wore wool socks on a beach on Kauai, Hawaii in June to get pictures. I was so proud! And these ones here are looking at me as if to ask “What is the problem?”

To make a long sock-sob-story shorter (too late!) and to answer that question I am going to skip over the 4 remaining socks here in this pile, and tell you about THESE SOCKS. Oh mu goodness! THESE! SOCKS!! I will come back and recap the remaining socks in progress, but let me tell you how I catapulted out of the sock slump, the embargo on pair of sock knitting, to finish a pair in record time and feel lots of great feelings.

So back to the start of this story.

Picture a wet, wet, wet few days. Then extend that to weeks. Imagine if the main characters of The Cat In The Hat were me. Both of them. Me and Me, staring out the window at the rain on that cold wet day.

And The Cat comes in and disrupts the boredom; supplanting “ho-hum” with “HOLY COW!”

Some time ago, and I am not sure why exactly, I determined the little bits of scrappy fiber I said I was going to spin into yarn should be set aside for one day when I had time. One day I would make wonderful singles to ply together and fully use these leftovers. Well, one day arrived. Out came the little nests of fiber, none more than 10grams. Instead of spinning all these into long singles, I determined I would spin each and make my own mini skein of sock yarn. I spun thin. I spun intentionally. I spun a wee bit on the bobbin and then Navajo played it right away and made myself a little ball. Such a cute little ball! Other times I spun just a bit thicker and made two tiny bits on a bobbin to then barber pole ply them. The little pile of sock yarn balls grew and grew.

Once I weighed them and had 100 grams I cast on! On the first evening the cuff was started and the leg worked to the heel flap. And each and every single stitch lifted my heart until my heart and mind were in the exact same place. I was so proud seeing the work of my hands creating a sock. From little bits and bobs of scrappy leftovers, made into special cheerful mini-skeins, and now into a monster sock. I say “monster” as I remember someone on Instagram using #instaknit or #instaknitnight was calling her scrappy socks that: Franken monster socks. It stuck with me as a fun way to identify them. They weren’t really striped socks, they were created by pulling together random amounts of yarn and segmented not striped. And that is what I was doing!

The incredible thing that happened as knit each and every stitch was this shift in awareness, a shift in appreciation. My friend, a spotlight was now illuminating each little stitch I made. I was admiring them. And even more I was pausing to stretch out the next few inches of yarn soon to be used, twirling it through my fingers, admiring WHAT I MADE. Not just what I was making, but what I made to make what I was making! How’s that for really digging into it?

Rather than focusing my attention on what was to come [the finished sock], I was aware of what was happening in real time {and enjoying every stitch}.

Though it sounds like I spent ages basking in a love fest for each and every stitch, I wound up flying through these socks! I was eager to see how the handspun would knit up. And despite loving each stitch of the color I was working with at the time, it was still so rewarding to finish the bit of yarn up and be left with the delightful problem of choosing which to use next! Quick #protip to share which I learned years ago not for socks, but turns out it is 100% applicable, and that is the tip of weaving in the ends of the yarns as I go! I am going to do the legwork for you and add a link for that very technique. So if you are listening to this as a podcast episode, check the show notes for the supporting blog post. That will give you images of things I am talking about as well as the link for the video. One day I will take some photos, maybe a video, and create a tutorial for it on the Encourage Better website. I love a good photo tutorial with steps bulleted beneath each still shot image. I love when the tutorial has sketches! Something very calming, something very much my speed for emulating what I am being taught is captured in photo or sketch knitting tutorials. That is actually how I learned to Navajo ply, which is my FAVORITE! I tried watching a YouTube video. It was a great video, and yet my brain wasn’t seeing the frame by frame logical system of progression. I think there was a series of drawings by Abby Franquemont, or something on her blog about Navajo plying, thought to be honest it was so many years ago, I may be way off base. I know that I loved her Respect The Spindle book, it is a treasured book in my library. So is her book The Long and Short of It, which is on Drafting, and it is just brilliant!

So, my hand spun, hand knit socks were a happy success! Does that mean the others aren’t or weren’t? I don’t think so. What I do think is I am a knitter interested in the process perhaps a bit more than the outcome. That is fulfilling to me, at least when it comes to socks. I do love a good mindless knit where I can flick my switch for autopilot and not even glance at what my hands are doing, so long as they are steadily, rhythmically moving. I have to admit, I prefer that to be with a stockinette stitch raglan sweater. THAT is my “knitting at the movies” project.

The small, intentional project that is a hand knit sock, well my friend, that may need to be a focused opportunity for me. Something, somewhere, I can direct my attention to see growth and progress and developments. A place I can’t help but notice that I am remarkable. That knitting is remarkable. That this activity I share in common with you is remarkable and very much, for this season anyway. be a place I notice.

A variety of handspun by me yarns worked together as I knit to create socks! Here is an up close peek at the work I am so over the moon about!

It may not be true but for another completed sock pair, or two, but it is a noticable mile marker for me right now where I am, and so I am going to wrap up this second pair of handspun socks and maybe carry this sock knitting mojo back to my TBK pile! I am already pretty stoked about this sock blank project right now. And the yarn is thick enough that it could work up in no time flat! Not that that fact should be what motivates me… I mean didn’t I just spend all this time chatting to you about that not being the motivation? Who am I?!?

Well my friend, I hope I am somebody you can trust to cheer you on in your knitting! And even more, I hope you can trust me when I say you are such an amazing human, created intentionally and with joy. And wherever you are in this world, I hope that the sun is shining on you and that you realize how valuable you are.

And now, as promised, here are links you may find useful:

Girl Friday Sock Pattern (free download) Far North Yarn Co.

Hibernal Socks by Summer Lee Designs Co. How to knit your ends in as you go for your color changes on socks

Summer Lee’s Sock Patterns 🥳. Socks On A Plane (free pattern)

Petty Harbour (free sock pattern) The Felix Cardigan post & podcast episode

If I have left off any links, please mention them in the comments and I will add them above!