Sock it (to Me)

As documented in a previous post, I bought both of these yarns, the olive Alpaca Merino Fine by Estelle Yarns, and the variegated Manos del Uruguay Alegria, in a fraught effort to use up some spring green DK yarn I had on hand. After making a beautiful sweater out of these two yarns, I was pretty sure I had enough left for a pair of socks.

Given that I was taking some risk out of running short on yarn, I chose the Chipps pattern, by Stephanie Mason, for the sock project, not because I wanted to do the project in stripes, but because it was the only toe-up free fingering weight sock pattern I could find. If I knitted the socks toe up, I could adjust the length of the leg to suit the amount of yarn I had.

Here are the completed socks. As it turned out, I needn't have worried about running out of yarn. These are a little longer than I wanted and I still have about 15 grams of each yarn left (just as well as I'll need it for darning). But at least I got to try something new, as I'd never made socks toe-up before.

And though I've made a number of pairs of socks in my life since I knitted my first pair at 14, this is the first pair of socks I ever knitted for me. I can now confirm what my father and brothers have told me: that handmade socks do feel way better than commercially made. I'll be making more. My current set of wool work socks are getting worn (and paint splashed) and will need replacing within the next few years. I aim to own a set of eight handknitted wool socks by the time I discard all the old ones.

This project used up 80 grams of stash yarn.