As promised last time, some actual knitting. It’s getting to the time of year where my knitting slows and socks are the first thing that I drop from the knitting bag so it may be a while until you see another pair. I can’t work up any enthusiasm for knitting socks when I’m living in sandals. This was knitted as a long tube that I then cut up and added heels, toes and cuffs to. This is an attempt to reduce the volume of yarn going into the sock scraps bag. Normally I would have knitted one pair of socks and tossed the rest of the ball into the bag of leftovers and as you can see that’s a lot left over. By knitting two pairs I have less than 10g left over. Mine are the frilly ones on the left, the others are for my mother.

The green that I used for heels and toes was also a leftover, I’ve been using the rigid heddle loom to weave a narrow strip that will become the middle panel of some bags (it’s not very narrow at the moment but it will be when I’ve cut it down the middle). I ran out of the main yarn about halfway along and dredged the sock yarn drawer for a replacement weft, it just happened to be the right colour for the socks too. I had 12g of that left so with this and the socks I’ve taken two balls out of the sock yarn drawer and added 20g to the scraps bag. It feels like a win but clearly it isn’t.

I made these this week, mug rugs or drinks coasters or whatever you want to call them. They are all the same, cream on one side and dark grey on the other. I can’t get over how they are different colours on each side, I know that’s what doubleweave does but it’s like some sort of a magic trick. Flip – cream, flip – grey. The main reason I bought an eight shaft loom was for block doubleweave but I’ve been putting it off because I couldn’t visualise the warping. I understood how the layers were woven, just not how they came into being. I have been sketching grand plans for some fancy shrinking doubleweave scarves but rather than jumping straight in with those I thought it would be best to start with something small and simple where I followed a pattern and did what I was told. These are the checkerboard mug rugs from Jennifer Moore’s “Doubleweave”, except that I used a different yarn at a different sett and rejigged the pattern to work with the different number of threads. These are made from sock yarn, each layer sett at 12 epi so 24 epi in a 12 dent reed. Expert opinion is that I’d have been better with a 6 dent reed but seeing as I don’t have one that wasn’t an option. Even thought they are small they’ve taught me a lot including square hemstitching (I unpicked it because I didn’t like the look in such thick thread). This was just under a three yard warp and I got eleven coasters, if I’d have persevered against the shrinking shed I might have managed twelve. This took two balls out of the sock yarn drawer and put 60g into the scrap bag and I am unrepentent because I thought the two colours would work well together and they did.

They were so much fun that I’m making more, this time I’ll be having fringe on all four sides because I’ll be weaving two sets side by side. This is because one of the things I learned from the first set is that I don’t have anywhere to rest the shuttle with a 5″ weaving width. The grey warp is overdyed Regia sock yarn, the black dye has killed the contrast in the yarn so it now reads as a solid. The red and orange are from the scrap bag, leftovers from a pinwheel scarf and a pair of mittens. This project should lead to a net reduction on the scrap pile, there will be some of the grey going in when I’m done but there’s a lot of colour coming out. This weaving thing is starting to have an impact on the sock yarn leftovers, I can now get them all in one bag. Give me a year and I’ll have it all under control (who laughed?)