Fulled Monster Handspun Stash-busting Yoga Socks

The December sock challenge on Ravelry was to use up your stash of yarn, and possibly also to make a sock that wasn't quite a sock.  I decided to use up some of my handspun and make some yoga socks. Yoga socks don't have a heel or a toe so that you can grip the mat better with your sticky feet.

I decided also to full the socks pretty hard, to make them more durable.  Fulling knitting means washing it in hot water and maybe drying it in the dryer so that it shrinks on purpose. This makes it thicker and more durable, and also warmer.  Of course, it shrinks the piece too, so you have to plan ahead and knit it bigger.

The question is, how much bigger?  In the process of fulling these socks, I learned a few things.

Fulling for 12 minutes in hot water in the washer makes socks shrink a lot.  If you do this, you  have to add 15% to your wanted circumference, and 27% to your wanted length.  For example, if you want your socks to be 8" around and 9" long at the foot, then you have to knit them 9.2" around and 11.5" long!  Twelve minutes of fulling makes a very stiff sock, and I didn't like the feel of it so much.

Fulling for 6 minutes in hot water in the washer doesn't change the dimensions of socks at all, though.  But fulling them 6  minutes and then drying them for 20 minutes in the dryer causes a moderate amount of fulling that seems just right.  In this case, you add 10% to the wanted circumference, and 20% to the wanted length for plain stockinette stitch.  For Fair Isle knitting, which draws knitting in somewhat by virtue of the floats on the back, the percentage is more like 7% and 15%.  It's always a good idea to make a swatch.

Yoga socks are a good way to make a swatch because fit is not critical.

Peace, love and tie-dye, plus dinosaur long johns

I've been playing with the dye pot and fabric paints again, oh no! Sometimes the results are good; sometimes not so much.

This tee shirt turned out pretty well.  I used the low-water immersion method of dyeing, where you put the piece in a plastic bag with a small amount of water, dye and fixative.  I poured two colors in there:  turquoise and yellow.  The result was a kind of green:

After I dyed it, I used fabric paint to stamp some stars on it.  Stamping results in a kind of transparent, not very visible mark.  So I also used some stenciling around the neckline, which results in a more opaque mark for some reason.  Maybe because you end up putting down more paint.

Here is a detail:

On the back I drew some spirals free hand, squeezing the fabric paint out of a little applicator bottle. It was fun.  Makes you wonder why you don't draw on your clothes all the time.

Also I dyed some capri pants I got from Walmart last summer.  The colors are cerulean blue and turquoise.  Then I stenciled some shapes on the legs.  These were not so successful I think:  the design is too rigid or something.

The yellow moons, which you can barely see, were stamped on.

Then I made a little hooded fleece top for my niece, using an Ottobre magazine pattern:

The fleece came from Hancock's, and it was pretty good quality for Hancock's.  However, if I had had time, I probably would have ordered the really good stuff online. The best fleece, IMHO, is Polartec from Malden Mills. There's an outlet online where you can get it cheap.

This pattern had a really cute feature:  the reverse applique on the front pocket, and then here on the back too:

My new sewing machine came in useful for this:  you use triple reinforcing stitch to stitch around the petal shapes, through the fleece layer and the contrasting layer piece underneath.  This was tricky at first, but I got better at it. Then you cut away inside the shapes to reveal the other color underneath.  (You use a piece of tear-away stabilizer under all layers.)

From a different Ottobre magazine, I made some boys' long johns, using the beloved dinosaur skull knit fabric I got last summer:

The idea here was that the seams would be on the outside for comfort, and then would be covered by this rib knit.  It worked, but then that left a big wad of several layers

of fabric at the crotch seam.  But I fixed that by zigzagging

it down.

Monster fulled yoga socks for December

The December Sock-down challenge on the Ravelry group Sock Knitters Anonymous is to make a sock that's not quite a sock.  One of the options is a pair of yoga socks.  This is what they look like.  (Note:  this is not a picture of my feet and my socks; this is from a Ravelry page with a yoga sock pattern on it.  I just put it here to show you what a yoga sock is.)

The idea is that your heel and toes can still grip the mat, but your feet don't get as cold as they would barefoot.

The other part of the challenge is to use up as many bits and pieces of yarns in your stash as possible.  Socks with a lot of very different (sometimes clashing) colors are sometimes called Monster Socks on Ravelry. I have a big stash of sport weight yarns in many colors:

Most of these balls are handspun yarn, although there are a few mill spun balls in there.

One problem with making socks from handspun is that my handspun wool does not have any nylon mixed into it. Nylon makes the socks wear longer without getting holes.  In the past, I have tried to card nylon with wool to make a sock blend, but it didn't blend in very well and I didn't like the result.  So my new idea, to make the socks more durable, is to full them before wearing.

Fulling is just washing the socks in hot water and perhaps tossing them in the dryer, to make the wool fibers catch on and cling to each other more tightly, otherwise known as shrinking.  It is like felting, in that the objective is to make the wool fibers fuse together, but felting is done with loose unspun fibers, whereas fulling is done to woven or knitted fabric.  It was common to full woven fabric in pre-industrial times; in Scotland, there were "waulking" parties, where wet wool was beaten over and over by gangs of women around a table, as they sang songs called "waulking songs."  Nowadays, all we have to do is throw a piece of woven or knitted wool in the washer with some hot water and some other pieces of clothing, agitate in the machine, and then remove and check the degree of fulling.  Further fulling can be done in the dryer, as the semi-wet piece tosses around in the humid heat.

Fulling makes knitting much more durable, so it seems a natural for socks.

I plan to knit fair isle yoga socks with corrugated rib at the top and along the edge of the opening at the heel and toe.  After fulling, I'll have an idea of the gauge of my fulled knitting--the number of stitches per inch after fulling, as well as before fulling--which will be useful information in designing future fulled socks or other clothing.  Ideally, I could come up with a percentage rule--i.e.  "make your sock 10% wider and 15% longer than you intend for it to be after fulling"--that would work for most wools.

Anatomical toes

I've been experimenting with anatomical toes on socks.  Most people's feet are not pointed like a normal homemade sock's toe is.  Well, maybe a normal sock is not pointed, but it has a rounded point.  The "normal" sock toe decrease is that you decrease the number of stitches on both sides, right and left, at the same rate, four stitches every other round.

But on my foot, the outside of the foot curves in more at the toe than the inside, because my big toe points pretty much straight ahead. I have never worn really pointy shoes in my life, so my feet have not taken on the shape of pointy toed shoes.  My feet are shaped like the Birkenstock clogs I wear almost all the time.

So I have started making sock toes reflect this fact.  My first effort was this:

I did no decreases at all on the big toe side, just on the outside "little toe" side.  It's very comfortable.

On my second model, I decreased every other row on the outside of the foot for about 3/4 inch, and then I started decreasing on both the inside and the outside of the foot, four stitches eliminated every other row, for another 1 1/4 inch approximately.  This yielded the following toe:

It's pretty comfortable too, but I think the first one is more comfortable.  We'll see which is better after I've test-driven both for a few weeks.

Miss Marple Mystery Sock

I have become addicted to Sock Knitters Anonymous, a group on Ravelry.  SKA has a monthly "challenge, " beginning in September:  each monthly challenge gives the knitter a choice between knitting a sock by a certain designer; or a sock using a certain technique; or, every other month, the mystery sock.
For November, the technique is mosaic knitting, and the mystery sock was designed by Star Athena.  That is the challenge I'm working on this month.

I learned about mosaic knitting early in my knitting career, which began thirty years ago.  My first knitting teacher was Barbara Walker, who wrote a book called Learn-to-Knit Afghan Book.  This is the first knitting book I ever had.  Barbara Walker is a big exponent of mosaic knitting.  It uses two colors (or more) like Fair Isle knitting, but you don't carry two colors in one row as in Fair Isle knitting; the color work results from slipping stitches from the previous row.  You knit two rows of one color, then two rows of another color, but you are slipping stitches from the row below, so it looks as if there are two colors carried in one row, sort of.

For some reason I didn't really take to mosaic knitting thirty years ago.  I didn't really like the way it looked as well as I liked the way Fair Isle knitting looked.  Mosaic knitting has a kind of angular look to it, whereas Fair Isle patterns are more organic-looking, and with Fair Isle knitting, you can knit dancing ladies or dogs or skateboarders (yes, I graphed a skateboarder once for my son's hat).

But I love Star Athena's design for this sock.  It's intricate and absorbing to knit. I'm still working on Clue # 2 (a new clue is published on Ravelry and Star Athena's blog every Sunday of November), so I'm a little behind.   The cuff had one mosaic pattern (clue #1) and the leg has two mosaic patterns that alternate, although you can only see one in this picture. When I'm further along, I'll post another picture.

Woodsman's Socks

I have recently become aficianada of Ravelry, a great online community for knitters, spinners, and crocheters.  On Ravelry, you can join various groups:  I joined the Spinner Central group, Adult Surpise Jacket group, and a huge group, Sock Knitters Anonymous.  Sock Knitters Anonymous has over 8000 members!

One of its main activities and attractions is Sockdown: Ravelry!  Sockdown is a series of monthly personal sock-knitting challenges, not really a contest, although there are prizes.  (I'm not sure how they decide who gets the prizes, but no matter.)  Every month you have a choice of usually two or three challenges, and you can do one or all.  One challenge is always a technique or style of sock; for example, in October it was making a man's sock, and in November it was using mosaic knitting in a sock.  Or, a certain designer is featured, and you can make any design by that designer.  On odd-numbered months, like November, there is a Mystery Sock!  A well-known designer designs a sock for that month, and the first "clue" is posted on the first of the month.  The mystery sock for November is called Miss Marple, after the Agatha Christie character, and the technique is mosaic knitting. All we know now about the Mystery Sock is how to knit the cuff; future details will be forthcoming.

You have two months to knit your sock.  That's lucky for me, because I didn't cast on my man sock for October until October 30!  I chose an easy, fast, and reliable pattern:  Elizabeth Zimmerman's Woodsman's Sock, from Wool Gathering 10. I made this about twenty years ago for my dad, and he loved it, but unfortunately it was made out of 100% real wool, and it shrank in the washing and drying.  So this time I'm making it out of a washable wool blend with some washable merino and nylon:  Stroll Sport, sold by KnitPicks.

The original EZ pattern called for a heavy Bartlettyarns yarn, but I am using two strands of Stroll Sport to equal the weight of the original yarn.  I couldn't find a bulky washable sock yarn.  Maybe somebody should make one.  Heavy socks are great under boots in the winter time.

To make this sock you cast on 44 sts on size 6 needles.  I will knit the ribbing for about seven inches, and then continue the ribbing on the top of the foot.  This makes a sock that hugs the foot snugly.  The pattern can be found in EZ's books Knitting Around and The Opinionated Knitter. 

Finishing the Adult Surprise Jacket

Today I sewed up the adult surprise jacket and darned in all the loose ends. Then I could try it on.

It fits pretty well. I am glad that I did the armhole depth adjustment. This is a slight change to the pattern that is recommended if you want a deeper armhole than on the original pattern. I don't like tight armholes, so I did this adjustment. It causes the top seam to move a bit toward the back, but this isn't a problem for me.

The only slight fit problem is that it is not quite as big around as I planned it to be. The directions said to find out your gauge, and then measure a sweater that fits well to figure out how many stitches to cast on. My error was that I thought my gauge was 4 sts/in, when in fact it was closer to 4.5 sts/in. Still, it fits like a slim cardigan rather than a boxy jacket, and that's ok.

The other mistake that I made was to use some chenille here and there, and it is already worming its way out in places, like on the sleeve, as you can see in the picture.



I sewed up the sleeves. There was an option to join the sleeves to the back at the top of the sweater by doing an I-cord cast-off, but that would have created a little raised cord along the back of the arm and shoulder, and I thought that might not be comfortable under a jacket. Just plain old sewing with a darning needle worked fine.

I still don't have any buttons, but that will soon be remedied.



So, would I make this sweater again? I might make it again as a tee shirt. If you didn't lengthen the sleeves or the bottom, and just made it exactly like the baby surprise jacket with elbow-length sleeves, it would be a nice short jacket. Or you could seam it up the front and make a pullover tee.

I think it's a good pattern for cotton yarn. Knitting cotton in garter stitch gives it some stretchiness that plain stockinette stitch, knit in cotton, lacks. Garter stitch is very stretchy in all directions, so the fact that it's a bit tight around the bottom of the sweater is not a huge problem.

Cotton is not my favorite knitting yarn, although it's practical for Houston. One problem I noticed when I was darning in the ends is that they don't stay darned in, as wool ends do. They are slippery and easily work themselves out. So I had to tie some knots on the inside to keep the ends stable.

The one bad thing about knitting sweaters in one large, amorphous shape like this is that you can't try it on near the beginning to make sure you've got it the right size. When you knit in the round from the bottom up, you can do this.




My next sweater is going to be a wool fair isle sweater knit from handspun, so I will be able to try it on near the beginning and make sure it's right before I proceed.

I think I will get a lot of wear out of this sweater, though, as it's the perfect weight for Houston in the fall. And because it has almost every color in it, it matches all my clothes!