Checkerboard socks
I know that Trekking yarn doesn’t often make a pair of matching socks and that would really bug me. It would be fine if I was giving them away but the next pair was for me and I couldn’t look at a non matching pair week in and week out. My idea was to use it with a strong pattern so the socks would shout out a match even if the colours weren’t exactly the same. What I needed was a ball of solid sock yarn in a contrasting colour but that idea went west when the yarn shop that I visited didn’t stock solids. I know that shelf space is limited and solids are really not as attractive as patterned yarn so I wasn’t that surprised not to find any, it is after all the same reason that I didn’t already have some in the sock yarn drawer. I did find a “patterned” yarn that was just about solid so it would have probably worked out as well, if not better, than with a solid yarn.
This is a variant on the checkerboard socks in Lucy Neatby’s “Cool Socks, Warm Feet”, the variation being that I was knitting them cuff downwards. This is another exercise in two colour knitting and I didn’t yet have the tension right at the ends of the needles but they didn’t look hideous, just a bit odd. They looked better on than off, which is of course why I’m showing them that way. I was interested in seeing what happens when the brown changes colour, it’s only a very subtle colour change and it’s overshadowed by the more obvious changes in the Trekking.
All this is in the past tense, I was interested in seeing what happens but I’m not anymore. They don’t fit me for a start but that would have been allowable as they do fit Mama Smallfeet. I couldn’t work out why it was that the stitches were pulling so badly all the way around. At the ends I understand, that’s down to me, but in the middle of the needles? It’s only pulling across the back of the red sections, the brown sections lay flat. I am doomed because I with a bit of thought it is clear that the plainish yarn that I bought just for its colour is the culprit – it’s called Mega Boots Stretch for a reason. It has 7% elastic so that it stretches (d’oh) and I think that is why it is behaving so differently when knitted alongside the Trekking. It’s obviously not going to get any better, if the two yarns can’t play nicely together then they will have to be split up and go back to the sock drawer.
I still like the pattern and I’d knit it again but not with this heel, it was a bit too shallow for me. Another time I’d work the heel in stockinette rather than garter stitch and I wouldn’t be such a dolt as to use stretchy yarn for colourwork. The other thing this has shown to me is that I really like my own sock yarn, I like the colour changes in the Trekking but I can do that with the added bonus that I can make a pair of socks that match.
Have a warm weekend everyone.
