Well, I have successfully knitted 3 pairs of socks in the past 6-9 months. But all were made with yarn from my stash - specifically lace weight kid mohair doubled - so I used 2 strands held together to get a 4ply weight, for two versions
and for the green pair I actually used 3 strands which I would not recommend because it was too thick for the needles and hurt my hands so won't be repeating that one.
Though it did produce a very thick pair of lovely green socks. So worth remembering for the future if a very thick pair is ever really needed. But these are so thick I am not able to wear them with my walking shoes only with my big heavy walking boots. They simply do not fit inside comfortably.
Anyways I really wanted to knit a pair of socks using proper sock yarn.
If I have done it right you should be able to click the individual socks above for the links if you want to know more about each pair. All are Winwick Mum patterns and thats what I am going to use again because the tutorials make it so straight forward for me to understand how to knit socks so I am sticking with Winwick Mum sock patterns for now. In fact for the ones I have started I am using the Sock-along again which I used for my purple and green pairs because these should have a self stripe in the yarn making them fancy without much effort.
In the UK - as in online its all very expensive for sock yarn. Plus you have to also pay for delivery and I really cannot afford to pay £10 for a single pair of socks and its not been possible recently for me to invest in 4 pairs of socks at once plus the postage which would make the pairs cheaper because they would only have one lot of postage. Postage is usually it seems £4 - 4.95 so you are talking £10-12 and upwards for a pair of socks! And that includes Ebay prices as well as Love Crafts etc etc. So I have been a bit stuck. The cheapest yarn I found was £8.99 a ball (+ postage) though there was some on Ebay for £6.99 a ball making it about £10 for the ball with postage added. Thats just too expensive! Hence I used my stashed kid mohair instead but although it works well its not proper sock yarn and I do want to see how different real sock yarn is in wear and lifetime etc. After all a yarn made for socks should work better than any other yarn knitted up into socks you would think wouldn't you?
But we went for a few days to Krakow and there is a brilliant wool shop there. There is also a pretty naff shop in the central Galeria shopping centre by the station. If you ever go I would avoid that one. They will not let you look or touch and they just are very rude and nasty so I left without buying.
But in the good shop it was completely different. Its still in the centre but further out on one main road. The lady was friendly but didn't hassle me and let me just look, touch and then buy without constantly getting in the way.
So I bought 4 balls of sock yarn - 4 pairs of socks to be. Its going to keep me happy for months!
I already started one as you can see. You need to unwind the wool from the centre of the ball till you get to a white bit. This is long so its easy to find the right place and then you have two identical balls to give self striping socks without having to join colours. You can see half of the white central bit around the wound ball. The other half I shoved back inside the other ball. I was not so sure if I was meant to continue winding from the centre to make a second ball but decided to just start knitting from the outside of the remaining yarn instead. Hopefully thats the right thing to do. Its a learning curve for me. I think knitting from the original ball from the outside matches the ball I wound though. This pair will be the most colourful of my choices. There were many many more colours in the range but I tend towards purples mostly and this ball is the extra one my partner told me to buy since we will probably not go back to Krakow. Its my colourful option. I might look for this shop online though.
Its so exciting so I actually never got the photos of the whole ball before I started to do this. I just had to get going with winding this and starting to knit more socks. Sorry for that but you can see the other 3 intact balls. The unwond ball has stripes of green, pink, blue and grey, I think from when I was winding it whereas the ones below go more towards purples. The ball on the right I am intending to do the Winwick Mum lacey sock pattern - of course this could change but I reckon for summer that could be a nice one to attempt. Its a marl rather than striped yarn and I think was the most expensive of the 4 balls. But only buy a couple of Zlotty so not much in GBP.
The lady behind the shop counter also gave me a free project bag and as you can see it has her website on there so I will have to check that out. This is 70% wool/ nylon and is superwash wool so can be machine washed unlike my previous 3 pairs.
Oh I am so happy!
Though these 4 balls of wool made a surprisingly big difference to me fitting everying back into the cabin bags we took! I had to disperse between my partner's and my own and even then it was all a bit squashed to get everything I took in. We were travelling just with cabin bags since we only went for a few days and there really was no spare room. I did not want to leave anything behind since its all me made and loved and mostly quite new so I ended up wearing an extra layer on the plane home for this yarn! Really its surprising how much space 4 balls of yarn can take when you are travelling light! Good thing I only bought 4 balls!
The 4 balls cost 144 PLN so about £24 depending on exchange rate. Still not cheap but that difference in price to UK yarn makes this possible for me and of course also I had some Zlotty ( polish money) so I had money to spend that I rarely do in the UK. And you should buy a souvenir from your holiday after all. This is mine.
There are also absolutely no wool shops where I live so I have to buy online and thats a pain cos you cannot touch the yarn or see what its really like till it arrives and then really its just too expensive to send it back because they rarely give free returns if they give returns at all. Yes the internet is wonderful but certainly has its downsides. The website for this shop is on the bag if you wanted to check it out or visit it.
Ah and the lady also spoke english which did help. There is a also a third yarn shop ( according to Google) but I never managed to find that one and did not really have more money for yarn anyway.
If you did want sock yarn and cannot get it where you are and happen to be visiting Krakow or choose to buy online its worth having a look here though it could turn out it costs too much to import so its something you would have to look into but they have such a massive range of sock yarns and thats without everything else they sell. Wonderful shop!
Have a great weekend
Bracken
Oh your socks are lovely and you've made a great choice with Lang SuperSoxx yarn, it knits up into great socks. You'll be wearing them for years which does make them better value for money but it can be expensive in the beginning. It's worth keeping an eye out on websites like Wool Warehouse as they often have a sale on Drops yarn and that makes a good pair of socks. Also, Kemps Woolshop is an excellent place to look for yarns on clearance as they often have sock yarns at greatly discounted prices - www.kempswoolshop.com. You're all set up for the next few pairs though - I'll look forward to seeing them! :) xx
ReplyDeleteHello, Thats really good to know. That it makes good socks. A friend has said she will try and get me some more when she goes to Krakow on a couple of months time but I will check out these other shops you have told me about. Thank you for that.
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