I have acquired quite a bit of superwash merino roving in the past year or so. In an attempt to use it up (and then get to knit fabulous socks out of it) I’m working on spinning more sock yarn.

This roving started out as two 4 ounce bumps; the colorway is Water Lilies from the Loopy Ewe ( here). Because it’s a duo, you have two strands of roving in each pack, each one a different color. In this case it was blue/purple and purple/green.

this means I had 50% of blue/purple and 50% purple/green. This presents a problem when you want to make a three ply sock yarn with even color distribution. I had thought I’d just split it all in thirds; but didn’t like breaking the green off so it’d be only in part of one of the plys. I have other roving from this same dyer; and found a pile of blue/purlple that matched that I hadn’t used yet.

Are you with me? I’m lost too.

Each bag in the picture represents one ply of a three ply yarn. Two of those plies will be blue and purple. (those are in the back of the picture). The third ply will be the green/purple. I divided them by weight +/- .1 ounce.

Because I added more roving to the pile, I will end up with 12+ ounces of sock yarn. I can normally knit a pair of socks from 4 ounces of my handspun. So I’ll either knit 2 pairs plus a small pair (maybe for one of my kids) or one pair plus something else.  Actually I seem to remember each bag weighing around 5 ounces. This is going to be a LOT of sock yarn :)

A bit fuzzy of a picture; but you can see the texture in the pattern nicely even so. It’s a nice knit; easy to memorize and more interesting than plain stockinette.

Updated to add : The pattern is Copper Penny from this book:

In observance of my new knitting resolutions; I am knitting this sock from stash yarn. It also happens to be yarn that was already partly knit into another sock; but the sock was way too big and had the wrong needles, etc so I started a different pattern. The yarn is bearfoot by mountain colors; and the pattern is Copper Penny from the Handpainted Yarns sock book.

I also finished these socks out of my handspun:

I’m wearing them today and they fit wonderfully.

Lime and Violet have a blog that lists cool stuff called The Daily Chum.   (They also do a really cool podcast). My Catoptrical sock design made the list. WOOHOO!! I’m doing the happy dance :)

See the post here.

ca·top·tri·cal: “formation of images by mirrors”

The latest sock pattern I have designed. You can purchase it at The Knit Foundry pattern page and you can see it at Ravelry here. Huge thanks to my test knitters: Marta and Marie

I don’t know why, but after a hiatus where I knit NO socks at all; suddenly I’m sock crazy! The sock yarn in this picture was purchased so I could work on some new sock designs. I needed solid yarns to show off the patterning. Yes, there’s a multicolor yarn in there too (I just couldn’t resist those pretty colors). Keep an eye out for new patterns coming! (or maybe I’ll submit to knitty.. hmmmmm. heh).

The only knitting I’ve been doing lately is on these socks. I finished the first one tonite. (Except for weaving in the ends). The sock weighs 1.6 oz; and I enough handspun left to make three more socks; so I’ll get two pair total. I’ll want a different pattern for the 2nd pair – any suggestions?

This is what I’ve been knitting lately. Of course this is a sock made out of my fabulous and wonderful handspun. It’s so fun to knit with my handspun! I have been spinning a ton of yarn lately; I’m falling behind on washing the skeins.

Normally I hate short rows, all those wraps are totally fiddly; and the end result never looked very good for me. I decided to try socks with short rows again, and wanted a different method.

Japanese Short Rows are really cool. Here’s the heel only halfway knit. Yes, you do get dangly little saftey pins everywhere.

After knitting, a sample fitting:

Other views:

I tried to use those saftey pin like stitch markers, but they were too thick. These weren’t even coilless saftey pins, which I would recommend, as it would be a bit easier to remove the saftey pin if you happen to catch that coil on the wrong side of the loop. If that happens you have to stretch the yarn in that area a tiny bit more to get the saftey pin off. Mine came out about 80% correct, and 20% wrong. The heel still looks awesome though.

Back to Knit Visualizer.

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a few hours later – an update on that KV2.0 thing. I have the demo versions ready. I have the full versions ready (I hope! no more last minute bugs please!). I have the upgrade webpage about half ready. I still have to build the coupon codes for upgraders (this is a biggie) and do some PHP for the demo download, and then upload the finished/changed web pages and then email everyone about it.

So recently I was contemplating spinning some sock yarn. I have this:

or maybe this:

which has pretty colors:

Much discussion between myself and the other members of my totally awesome spinning guild about how to figure out what size single to spin to get a specific size plied yarn. Shane did some research and found a formula to use. The size of the singles is equal to the square root of the number of plies times the wpi of the finished yarn.

Yikes!

To make it simpler for you, I’ve created a little online calculator

Spinning WPI Calculator

You’ll also notice that link is now in a “tools” section on my sidebar. I found a commercial yarn that has around 13 WPI, and I want to make a 3 ply yarn. Now I know what size to spin the singles yarn (go use the calculator to find out) :) Enjoy!