Show Me the Knitting!

There's been some hot and heavy knitting going on here the past couple of weeks, and since I'm updating the shop with yarn this week, (Wednesday) I thought it was high time I showed you my hand dyed socks.

When I started thinking about dyeing yarn and selling it, I knew I would have to have some self control. I am one serious sock-yarn-stasher, and I have no business skimming from the "for sale" stuff, when the sock yarn wing of the house is already full.

But there comes a time when I just have to grab one of those skeins, for, you know, research.

This was from a practice batch I dyed up in May.

I know those fancy schmantsy variegated yarns look so pretty in the skein, and they're glamorous to knit, but I really do have those days when I just want to wear a more solid color sock.

Here is another solid-ish combination that I love, pale periwinkle and light blue. I am using the remainder of this same yarn for the Flower Basket Shawl--progress is being made--I'll show you it later this week.


I dyed this one around the Fourth of July. I called it Picnic Basket.


Kinda festive, if I do say so myself.


This colorway was from the very first batch I sold to the public: "Iris Garden". It was a leftover 1/2 skein, not quite 50 gms, hence the shortie socks. I usually make the legs fairly long, 7 or 8 inches, and these were really just an experiment to see what the yarn looked like, I didn't expect to love them so much and I wear them all the time.

I used a scrap of "Glade" for the heel and toes.

I don't like yarns that pool or stripe, and I try very hard to dye the yarn so it won't pool. That means very small areas of color, and it takes a lot longer to do it that way, but I love the result. If it does start to pool on me, I change one of my needles (size 1) to a size 0. That usually redistributes the color enough to take care of the problem.


This one wasn't research exactly, more of a quality control issue. (Yeah, that's it.) I found a small white areas on this yarn when I was skeining it up. I didn't want to sell it, so it found its way into my knitting bag.


After knitting it up, I realized that--what I thought looked white, was really pale blue, and looked it great in the sock. So there's a skein left and its going in the shop on Wednesday. It doesn't have a name yet--anyone have suggestions?


And lastly, this was a small leftover ball of "Summer Romance". I confiscated it to make a little pair for our mascot.


And here is the Sophie's Toes mascot herself, Miss Sophie, quite happy to have her first hand-knit sock.

"Ok, Mom, when are you going to finish the second one?"