New Sock Yarn

July 28th, 2007

I always love trying new sock yarn, as there’s always something to learn. Every company puts different priorities on their sock yarn: looks/colorways, lastability, luxury/softness, price (meaning, cheap!). You can’t have them all unfortunately, so you’ve got to choose.

The sock yarn that I tried out this week was Trekking XXL. I’ve heard a lot about it from various podcasters and bloggers, to mixed reviews. Some have absolutely raved about it, while others have said they hated it. Unfortunately most of my knitting on this sock was in the insanely hot and humid weather, so it wasn’t entirely comfortable. I think the 25% nylon content in it made it worse; believe it or not it wasn’t the 75% wool in the yarn that did it. I was also less than enthused about the colors/striping, as it doesn’t do much as you’re knitting. It’s mostly dark blue, and every once in a while a splash of lighter blue will come along. I really do get excited by striping/variegated yarns in my socks, and sometimes that’s what spurs me on. To each their own, eh?

Now that I’m done with the first sock of the pair, I don’t feel quite so ambivalent about this yarn. It seems like it was made to produce a long lasting sock, and since I knit tightly on small needles for my socks these should be around for a while. They’re also pretty comfortable on my feet, although not as stretchy as I’d like. I think next time I’ll do them a bit looser, or (gasp!) all in ribbing. And I must admitt, I’m really liking the striping now that I look at it complete. It’s a nice random even striping that suits me well. These will be nice to walk around the house in the winter. If I used two skeins, this sock yarn would make for some pretty awesome boot socks.

A bit about the sock itself (I know, post is light on pictures today). For the longest time I had been knitting all my toes using the short-row method because I thought it fit my foot better. Since then I’ve realized that I just need to make a longer foot to have the looseness in my toes that I like. Since the Spring Cable sock I think I’ve switched back to doing the traditional decrease toe with four decreases every other row. It’s much easier to knit, and I still haven’t mastered getting the stitches right on the corners of the short-row toe.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 28th, 2007 at 5:54 pm and is filed under Knitting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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