She Was Twisted

Knitting!

The sun was shining, it is warm and lovely – you couldn’t ask for a better day. Well, except for the fact that I am stuck inside working.

I actually completed these socks many months back, but never got around to blogging about them. Aren’t they gorgeous?!

These were my first socks knit from a Knit Picks sock blank. I followed the pattern, Two at Once, Toe Up, Magic Loop Socks. A very easy knit! (If you are seasoned in sock knitting.) I’m mentioned before that knitting with a sock blank is the best ever. Plus, you can control the color striping, which is what I loved. Here is what the blank looked like after I dyed it. You can see the beginning of the knitted socks at the bottom:

The only problem I had, is that I did not squish the dyes enough into the yarn. This made it knit up much lighter with white speckles where the dye did not go all the way through. I still love how it turned out, however!

Definitely something you should give a try, if you love knitting socks with simple stripes. I’m on my second pair now. Will post pics of the new socks soon!

I loved knitting my last pair of sock blank socks so much that I decided to knit another pair. What is a sock blank? Let me enlighten you!

Here is one of the reviews from Knit Picks:

“Anyone who’s ever hand-dyed sock yarn, or knit from a skein of hand-dyed sock yarn, has been bedeviled by pooling colors. Knit Picks has a new product which takes the guesswork out of dyeing sock yarn. Sock Blanks are pre-knit tubes of undyed sock yarn. You dye the pre-knit tube with the stripes that you want, then knit your socks directly off the tube. Somehow this seems like cheating, but in a good way.” Yarn Scoop

Here is what my blank looked like after dyeing:

Things I love most about knitting socks from a sock blank:

1. You can easily dye stripes and patterns.
2. It is double stranded so you can knit two socks at once.
3. When knitting, the yarn does not twist and tangle the way it does when knitting from two separate balls of yarn.
4. You end up with two identical socks.
5. It keeps your knitting interesting without the need for any pattern repeats.
6. Provides endless mind-boggling for others trying to figure out why in the world you are creating TWO knitted pieces without any yarn in between.

Definitely give it a try. I’m not sure if I will ever knit any other way. Yes, I’m that impressed.