Holey socks!

There are good holes and bad ones; sadly these beautiful socks now have both!

You could be forgiven for thinking that I’m sock obsessed since I have written recent posts about Noro Kuryeon sock yarn, the socks made from that yarn “muddy socks“, and my own design (Sweet Dreams socks). I do enjoy knitting socks, but I also enjoy knitting other items. At the moment, the “other items” that I’m working on are for patterns that I shall publish, so I cannot discuss them yet!  Hence another post about socks.

These are the “Triton socks” by Jon Dunn-Ballam, published in The Knitter (a UK knitting magazine). Jon is an indie yarn dyer from London, who produces yarn under the label “EasyKnits“; I knitted the socks in one of his yarns, called Bamboo mix (80% bamboo, 20% wool). Beautiful yarn for beautiful socks!

The socks are knit from the top down (starting with the cuff, ending with the toe). Most of the sock is worked in ripple stitch, with a lace panel worked in wave pattern on the outside of the ankle. This turned out to be a challenging pattern to knit, because as a someone who knits left-handed, I had to convert the stitch pattern instructions. The first step was to convert the right-handed written instructions to a right-handed chart, so I could visualise how this lace panel worked. Then I converted the chart from right- to left-handed. Then having knitted the first sock, I went one stage further; I worked out how to knit a mirror image lace panel (not in the original design), which you can see in the photo below.

Sadly, you can also see that the left sock had a large hole which developed recently, and the right sock is looking a bit thin in the same area. Oh dear! I really love these socks and am not about to give up on them. They shall be repaired! I’m not quite sure how, given the size of the hole and the pattern, but it shall be done.

If you’re not familiar with sock knitting, then you may not realise that most sock yarn contains about 25% nylon. Normally, I would prefer a yarn that is completely natural, but sock yarn contains nylon for a good reason – as we walk socks undergo a lot of wear and nylon adds strength which helps them last longer. All the other sock yarns that I have used, have contained nylon and none have worn through yet! So, by all means, use sock yarns without nylon, but be prepared for them to wear through, keep any left-over yarn and be prepared to repair them. Now where is my darning mushroom?