Hunt for the Indestructable Sock Yarn
Winter Survival Socks have long been a staple of my knitting repertoire. Thick warm and sturdy, the socks are the perfect protection from February floors.
They are also easy to knit—a simple 48 stitch cast on, a basic sturdy heel, and all the fun of turning (this has long been my favorite part) and then round and round to the toe. What could be more perfect for mindless knitting?
Darn socks
The only drawback: the wear--darn socks! There has to be a better way! So I’ve been experimenting over the years with plies of different kinds of wools and finding ways to make a better sock yarn.
On the left is an
early experiment—a three ply of two shades of Romney for strength and a dyed Corriedale for softness. These socks have held up pretty well but I feel I can do better. My husband managed to wear a hole into the heal of one sock after a winter's wear.
I’m also planning to knit prettier socks—maybe adding a few fancy cables to the tops—so I need to discover a fine and sturdy three ply yarn.
The quest begins
And so began the quest for the indestructible sock yarn. Over the summer, I joined Ravelry’s Tour de Fleece to help me focus on spinning up some new yarns. One thing I tried was blending with nylon—but I didn’t want boring nylon so I chose glittery Firestar.
You can see the results in purple—a BFL and red Firestar blends, and in this earthy brown, which is a brown Romney and multi Firestar blend. I like Firestar because not only is it nylon, but it is more reasonably priced than the alternative.
Another experiment is to blend wool with strong fibers like mohair and silk. Shown is a pair that blends gray corriedale with a purple and pink mohair blend to make a grey-pink yarn that kind of reminds me of the dawn sky. These I knit in a cable pattern and are show here.
Finer yarns
Fitting socks into a pair of shoes would be nice too. So my latest work will be to spin some really fine yarns just for that purpose. I am mixing this with a study on bamboo which I want to present to my guild.
The pile of roving shown is a blend of superwash merino/bamboo/nylon which I dyed violet. I love the variegated effect. My plan is to make a super fine yarn—possibly three ply, but I made need to go with two ply.
Naturally, I will need to change my sock pattern to 60 stitches around, but that will be the easy part. I will be posting pictures of the yarn and socks once I’ve finished them.
Merino/bamboo/nylon
I spun up the purple superwash merino/bamboo/nylon into a three ply light fingerweight wool. It knit up into a pair of socks that fit nicely into clogs. I still need to test them for wearability. Will the bamboo and nylon keep away the inevitable wear spots? Or will I be darning again?
One thing I noticed is that this particular blend did not have the warm when wet capacity of wool socks. On a cold wet night camping, my feet stayed icy and clammy in these socks when they got wet accidently. I switched to wool nylon socks and the problem dissapeared even when they were wet.
It could be the superwash element. I'm kind of opposed to superwash wool. I don't like the idea of it--chemically stripping off the scales that make wool wool just so we can throw it in the dryer-- but I purchased this roving anyway to test it. I put my regular wool socks through the washer machine anyway--on cold wash, usually on permanent press cycle and they've come out fine. After the spin cycle, they don't take too long to dry. So, I don't get a big benefit from superwash wool anyhow.
On the plus side, spinning this fiber was fun. It lent well to the two-handled long draw method where you attenuate the yarn between the your drafting triangle and the twist going into the wheel--a technique popularized by Mabel Ross and refferred to in Spin-Off as "European style long draw" or something like that. It further lent itself well to being thin while being strong. I've added a picture of the finished yarn and one of the socks.
After wearing the socks a few times, I developed a run in one of the toes. I was able to repair it quite easily. I suspect this was due to an error while doing the kitchener stitch to close up the toe. Perhaps I didn't catch the loop quite right and left a weakeness that led to the run. As I mentioned it was easy to repair. I basically reknitted the run and then secured the toe so it couldn't happen again.
Merino/bamboo 60/40
My next experiment is with regular merino/bamboo in a 60/40 blend. This was also dyed by me using the color "evergreen" from Pro-Chem and Dye Company. Once again, I had a variagated result to my dyeing because I used acid fast dyes that only colored the protein merino fiber and not the cellulose bamboo.
Becasue the blend used natural merino, the fiber turned out much fuzzier and I have higher expectations for it being able to keep my feet warm when wet. But as I've said, we shall see. Only testing can tell me for certain. The green yarn is shown nearby.
