Wednesday, May 14, 2008

the Portland Socks revealed


So I finished my Portland Socks during the last few days of my holidays. This yarn was last year's birthday prezzie from my sisters -- thanks girls! It was a Louet yarn dyeing kit, and it came with the three colours you see: poppy red, cherry red, and blue. At the time I was way into self-striping yarns, and reskeined the whole lot of yarn and made it into three colourways -- one was poppy red with blue, one was cherry red with blue, and one was the two shades of red. Seemed like a good idea, but then I decided that I didn't want socks that had stripes that change colours every third of the sock. Plus I wanted an excuse to try the helix stripes. So I decided to do the toe/heel/cuff in the two reds, and then alternate the other three yarns in helix stripes for the rest of the sock. Still with me?

The helix stripe technique is a bit fiddly. A bit more fiddly than just doing regular stripes. Of course the benefit is that there isn't a column of yarn crawling up the back of the sock, and there is no mismatched join between rounds. Not that you can tell with this yarn, anyway.

In any case, I like them -- I like the way that the alternating self-striping yarns make a pattern that looks almost random. They are warm and snuggly and make me smile.

Other news: plugging away on the entrelac lap throw, but it is slow going... The quilt frame is here and I have basted the whole quilt sandwich together. On with the quilting...

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