Inspiration
Hand-Dyed Sock Yarn: The Grand Adventure
Dear Ann,
It’s no good traveling if you aren’t open to possibility, and to things being different from home. Late in my dad’s life, I rued that we kids never got him over to France to see the landing beaches in Normandy, which had loomed so large in his imagination from his childhood during World War II. But Dad was set in his ways. I think he would have been annoyed at the people of France for having different money, for not wrapping their bread in plastic bags, even for the delicious sauces of French cooking. He might have missed out on a lot of the experience, even if he’d gone.
It’s the same with knitting with hand-dyed yarns, don’t you think? A knitter has to put aside previous notions of sock esthetics and be open to what the yarn does, all on its own, as it is knitted up. The yarn is in charge of this sock, not you. To experience the joys of this journey, you have to be willing to take it as it comes, to let go, to speak its language.
Pooling? Flashing? Stripes that appear by magic, then quickly disappear? A pair of socks that barely resembles each other, let alone matches? All these things are normal in the land of hand-dyeing. When the yarn has been dyed with a painterly hand, there is no knitting more elevating and ecstatic. It’s pure, unrestrained color play. And an entirely different road to a pair of socks.
At the end of an exciting trip, it feels good to go home and sleep in your own bed. And maybe make a pair of socks that match.
But for now, I’m tasting all the delights of the hand-dyed yarns we brought into the Shop for Field Guide No. 11, and the sock blank that I painted all by myself.
Love,
Kay
It is pure joy…color joy!
I do not like matching socks!! I always do a different pattern on each sock or do plain stockinette and use a different color for each sock! Life is too short to wear matching socks And the wonderful thing about this is I have had lessons on how different fibers and colors work with different patterns! All from a sock!
Kay, thank you for the nice comment! And another upside to not matching socks is…no second sock syndrome!
Agreed. The hand died sock yarns are really beautiful. I especially like the ones with the speckles, short striping, and all. The yarn dyers are coming up with some very clever names, too. I was thinking yesterday of what Anne wrote in the field guide about a sock yarn she purchased that had a “crazy clown colorway”, but the name of it was “Beige”. Love it! And love your sock blank, too, Kay. I can hardly wait to see how those socks knit up.
I knitted up a pair of socks in a hand dyed yarn 15 years ago. One sock striped & the other pooled. It drove me crazy & I ended up having to frog the pair. That was before I understood needing to cast on at the same point in the coloring. But, hand dyed meant that there would have still be no guarantees. So, yeah – they’re gorgeous, but they really need to be consistent to not drive me crazy!
Socks are absolute magic and the yarns are amazing. Once I pulled a hank from some deep stash and thought “why in the world did I ever buy this? I guess I’ll make socks from it”. Those turned out to be one of the most beautiful pair I own. You just never know!
What’s the point of knitting socks if you are not going to surprised and delighted in the journey????
Your sock blank is lovely and will be so fun to knit.
Who wears matching socks anyway????
My thoughts exactly! After the first three pairs, I started only knitting one sock so I don’t even have a matching pair of most of them. Makes folding them very easy. No digging around for a mate. Love your sock blank!
That’s why I never wanted to know the sex of of my babies before they were born.
Yay! Another unmatched sock lover .
Unlimited possibilities
I knit socks so I can be surprised with every pair.
I will be really interested to see what your socks look like from the blank that you painted. I am a dyer also and painted a sock blank when it was really wet and the colors ran together. I finally rescued these socks with knitting them in that spiral pattern with 2 balls of yarn from “A Year of Techniques”. They are really lovely now. It is one way to capture the pooling and make it really good. Dying yarn is so much fun.
I agree completely! Add to this list, “cutting a color out” of a yarn because you don’t like it. If you are that fussy, I say buy solid color yarns in colors that you like, so that you can do your own color mixing. (It’s what I do if I have very specific color requirements for a project.) Also, just as I think that it would be a Good Idea for everyone who is able to process a fleece just once, so you know how the process works, I think that dyeing your own yarn (at least once) is also Good. Even if you pick out your very favorite colors it can still be a surprise to see how the yarn turns out! That being said, I still have some “Why is this bread not in a plastic bag?” moments in my life and in my knitting!
Oh, and your sock blank colors are soft and lovely. They should make a perfect summer sock, if that’s not an oxymoron!
I can’t wait to see the socks that yields. Should be awesome!