Entrelac socks

 

Entrelac is a knitting technique that has fascinated me for a long time, and I finally learned to do it.  The February sockdown challenge on Ravelry was entrelac. I used a pattern by Kathryn Alexander that uses handspun.

Entrelac is kind of fiddly, but really not that hard once you get past the first few rectangles.  You have to turn the knitting a lot, unless you learn to purl back from the front, which I can sort of do, but it's so slow that it seems faster just to turn the knitting.

The great thing about entrelac is the fun of changing colors for each row of squares.  I had a lot of colorful handspun that I wanted to use up, so I used that yarn for the top.  But when I got to the foot, I was afraid handspun wouldn't be durable enough, so I used some millspun sock yarn (with nylon in it) in closely matching colors.  You can sort of tell it's different yarn, but the change is not too jarring I think.

Kathryn Alexander has some really cool entrelac hat designs that I'd like to try some day.