Vanilla sock round up

I’m really bad at blogging about my knitting projects, and there are lots of socks I’ve made over the last few months that I’ve never posted about… until now! Fair warning, this post will be really boring if you aren’t interested in sock knitting! I’m partly writing it as a record for myself.

I’ve revised and adapted my standard sock pattern a little bit each time, so I thought I’d round up the socks I’ve made and any changes I’ve made to the pattern. (As a side note, I’m considering writing up my vanilla sock pattern and putting it on Ravelry as a freebie, so let me know if you’d be interested in that!)

1. Scrappy socks

I made these using the same pattern and needles (2.5mm double pointed KnitPro Symphonies) as my circus socks, to use up the yarn I had leftover from them. I thought the pinks and oranges would look lovely paired with a grey, so I used CoopKnits Socks Yeah! in the shade Iolite. At first glance it just seems like a standard grey, but it actually has purples and greens heathered into it; subtle but beautiful!

2. Twin Peaks socks

These socks were knitted in in House of a la Mode’s House fingering yarn in the shade ‘Twin Peaks’. I loved this flickering green shade as soon as I saw it, and when I saw it was named after one of my favourite TV shows, I had to buy it!

I wanted to try writing a slightly more complicated pattern, so I charted a super basic ‘v’ motif using just knit and purl stitches and plugged it into the front 30 sts of my standard pattern. I wanted the V motif to echo the shape of pine trees (although in Twin Peaks the trees are of course Douglas Firs!) as I thought it would suit the show’s aesthetic.

Another thing I did was put 2×2 ribs at the sides and back, and I really like how the two side ribs continue down and follow the gusset decrease.

Given how expensive this yarn was, I was not impressed. Yes, the colour is beautiful, but on one sock I came across about four different joins in the yarn! It seemed like this skein should have been pulled by quality control or something. I probably won’t buy from this company again.

3. Regia 6ply socks

I made these using Regia 6ply, which is slightly thicker than your average sock yarn. I knit them as usual, on my 2.5mm Symphonies with 60sts, but there was a gap of a few weeks between knitting each sock, and in that gap my tension completely changed! I found this kind of hilarious, because one sock fits perfectly whilst the other is way too loose. I tried out some weird new toe I made up on one sock, and as with all of the new toes I try, it failed miserably! So on sock no. 2 I stuck to my old favourite, the round toe from Cookie A’s Sock Innovation.

I think part of the tension change was because my Symphonie needles were starting to splinter and break, so I was knitting a bit looser to try and make them last till the end of the sock. I gave up eventually and bought some new needles (Lykke Driftwood ones) which were far better. I have had SO many bad experiences with KnitPro needles, at this point I’d never buy from them again. I may do a rant post about it at some point, we shall see.

4. DyeBath Humblesock

For these socks I went down a needle size, to 2.25mm, as my 2.5mm socks were starting to get a bit loose. I kept the stitch count the same, the only thing I changed was the length of the heel flap which I increased by a few rows.

5. Scrappy advent calendar socks

I won’t be saying much about these socks now, because I’m going to do a whole blog post about them. Basically, for christmas I got a mini skein advent calendar from Lottie Knits (which I would highly recommend!) and made these with several of the purpley-blue skeins. I think these are the prettiest socks I’ve ever made. Like I said, I’ll be doing a whole post about these where I’ll go through all the techniques I used, so watch this space!