Pam Alison Knits

Somehow during my traditional Christmas-to-birthday hibernation period, I found the energy to complete my latest pair of socks. This was my Christmas cast-on project, but I had displayed only sporadic interest in working on the socks because my brain was switched off for most of the time. Indeed, if it wasn’t for the fact that I still have socks I want to remove from my life and which, therefore, need to be replaced, this project would probably still be languishing in the cotton sack I reserve for socks-in-progress.

The incoming socks used Bow Fiddle Yarns’ 4-ply weight sock yarn which is a mix of 75% superwash Merino wool and 25% nylon hand-dyed in a multitude of purples and pinks which the dyer has amusingly named “Tickle my fancy”. I used 52g of the 100g skein, which is pretty much standard for the size and length of socks I knit for myself. This means that I am an annoying 4g short of being able to squeeze 2 pairs of socks out of 1 skein. However, I could probably knit a second pair with this yarn working either the cuffs or the toes in a contrasting colour. Time will tell. I console myself by thinking how annoying it would be if these yarns were sold in 50g skeins or balls – I would have to break into a second ball just for 2g. Of course, I could simply knit the socks a few rows shorter in the leg, but I’ve settled on this leg length as being the one I’m most happy with.

The outgoing socks were knit back in summer 2020 as a “Frankensock” combination of left-overs from two other pairs. Both yarns were from my local dyer here in Norwich Noodle Soup Yarns, but only one of them was really suitable for my socks as I’m inclined to be lazy over hand-washing and often just stick my hand-made socks in the washing machine. The darker colour, “Rise of the Jellyfish”, coped fairly well with this mistreatment, but the paler colour, “Nuclear Sunrise”, didn’t. This is explained by them being different base yarns: from recollection, one was 100% Merino Wool and neither advertised nor reasonably expected to survive machine-washing, whilst the other was the more forgiving 75% Superwash Merino and 25% nylon blend. Anyway, that explains why, after a few years of solid mistreatment, the socks now look like this:

The foot is shrunk and felted to a degree where it resembles cardboard, and it is time to bid them a fond adieu, say “Farewell, and thanks for all the jellyfish” (to misquote Douglas Adams), pack them in a casket, load it into the photon torpedo tubes, and send them on their journey to crash spectacularly into a newly-terraforming planet in the hope that they will return later as reborn “Spock Socks”. Get my drift? I don’t want it to sound like I’m just going to throw them in the bin, though I am just going to throw them in the bin.

I think there may be one more pair in my existing sock drawer which will need to be replaced, then I will be in a position to be adding to the number I have to hand. I’d like to be at that point again. I went through a time where I thought I’d be wearing my hand-knit socks much less of the time, but since last summer they have been back as an almost daily wear, so I like to have plenty of pairs to hand. All of which is to say that sock knitting will continue to be a feature of the coming year’s knitting landscape. In fact, socks may be the only items I get to knit for myself this year, as I work on my friend’s cardigan and a couple of other projects of a non-selfish nature. I hope I’ll be able to squeeze in another garment for myself towards the end of the year. We shall see.

My other project for this year is to get much better again at recording my knitting works in progress in a notebook. I did this really well through to the end of 2019, at which point I had filled up the notebook I was using and didn’t replace it on a like-for-like basis. Knitting my friend’s cardigan has reminded me that I need to keep track of everything I’m doing in a way that is easy to reference, so that I can make sure the fronts of the cardigan will match the back where shaping and colour changes are concerned. Not only that, but it’s really good to have a record of what I did and when I did it. Something to look back on in my dotage, which I believe is scheduled for next Tuesday afternoon, somewhere around teatime.

I’m off now to enjoy a well-earned cuppa. I hope all your projects are progressing and that you are all carving out a little time to sit back and admire what you are working on, whether it be knitting, art, your journals, or planning your coming week.