April challenge – Reflections shawl

I came across this crochet pattern by Ana D on Ravelry, and it seemed to suit some yarn that I had in my stash admirably..

The variegated yarn is Kunstgarn which is a Danish sock yarn – 75% superwash wool 25% nylon. Mine is colour 28 which is apparently called ‘ceramic’. I bought some Scheepjes Our tribe which is 70% superwash merino 30% polyamide in colour 884 ‘Iris Garden’ as the base colour, and made the shawl on a 4mm hook. It took about 150g of the base colour and 100g of sock wool, and measures 130 x 66cm.

Now I have a difficult decision to make – do I wear it or sell it??

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January challenge – sock yarn blanket II

My second attempt at a sock yarn blanket, this one using the corner to corner technique:

It was quite hard to judge when I had used half of the sock yarn, and I had to change the ratio of plain to patterned rows towards the final corner of the blanket in case I ran out of it, but there still seems to be a colour balance to the blanket overall and I am pleased with the final product.

I used 1 x 100g ball of Schachenmayr Regia Die Sockenwolle design line 4 ply by Arne & Carlos Colour 03657 ‘Summer night’ and 3 x 50g balls of King Cole merino superwash 4 ply 3292 ‘Pale grey’ on a 4mm hook. The finished blanket measures 70 x 58cm and is 56 squares long x 46 squares wide.

This one will be on its way to Pram Depot soon – to keep a new baby warm and snuggly.

November challenge – sock yarn blanket

I was told recently that sock yarn is much undervalued – it is machine washable, soft, hard wearing, and comes in lovely colours. So, deciding that I was up for a challenge, I set out to make a baby blanket using sock yarn. Here is my first attempt:

So what were the challenges? A ball of random coloured wool can look far from random in a finished piece due to colour pooling of dominant shades, and I had to work really hard to minimise this in the blanket. It turns out that visually the dominant shade was the palest colour (a creamy yellow) which was in danger of building up to form significant blank areas in the blanket. The particular sock yarn that I chose had long colour changes, and perhaps a yarn with a shorter-length colour change would have been easier to achieve a random effect with.

Overall I am quite pleased with it. The colours are cheery and the wool content should make it warm despite being relatively thin. I have a couple more rows to do and then this one is off to ‘Birth Companions‘ a lovely charity that supports vulnerable women giving birth. If I get my skates on it might be being used by Christmas.

It is made with 2 x 50g balls of Grundl ‘hot socks color’ shade 410 which is 75% wool, 25% polyamide and is machine washable at 40 degrees C. Plus 3 x 50g of King Cole Merino blend 4ply superwash wool shade 46 (Aran). I used a 4mm hook.