Well, it is the middle of February and I am still catching up with blogging about Christmas knitting!

These are the other pair of socks that I knitted for my Mum for Christmas. The yarn is Lucia , 30% cashmere, 70% merino, 4ply weight from the lovely Dee at Posh Yarn. The colour is Feather .

The pattern is my basic sock pattern again, with a 3 by 2 rib at the cuff, narrowing to a 3 by 1 rib for the leg, short row heel with gussets in the leg and foot, and a stocking stitch foot. I know a lot of people don’t like colours in hand painted yarn to pool, but I actually rather like the effect on these socks. I love the way the stripes of colours are different in the different sections of sock, and the way the different colours look depending on the number of stitches there are in the round, and so which colours end up next to each other.

I found this yarn more suitable for socks than the 100% cashmere 4ply yarn I used before . The merino gives the yarn greater elasticity although the cashmere is still luxurious. The big difficulty with using inelastic yarn for socks is the shape of a foot means that the sock has to stretch to get over the heel when you put them on, but you don’t want them to go baggy and fall down. Although I’m not sure about doing any more socks in 100% cashmere I do think this yarn would make a great shawl or scarf where the drape of the yarn would really benefit the pattern.

Comments

I think the coloured Denise needles are a relatively new thing. The pink cables were a breast cancer awareness special edition, and the rainbow needles are dyed specially by Knitting Help.