To start the lesson, here is a picture of the dyed sock flat. It's a two-strand machine knit flat of fingering weight yarn. The fiber content is 60% Merino superwash, 30% bamboo, and 10% nylon. This yarn is sometimes called "Squish" when in a Yarn Hollow skein. The Yarn Hollow flats are sometimes branded as "Sock Religious" - for those devoted to sock knitting. In either the skein or the flat dyed piece, there are 434 yards of yarn, enough for a long, highly patterned sock.
The dye colors were chosen in order to show a lot of contrast in the sections knitted. I used periwinkle, lime, pear, tan, chocolate brown, and indigo.
Yarn, Safety Pin, Life Line
To start a Yarn Hollow sock flat, start with the edge that contains a safety pin that is winding three separate threads: one life line, and the double stranded yarn. Unpin the safety pin and untie the tie securing the three threads. ne thread is going to be obviously a different thread - most likely cotton. This is the lifeline. Gently pull out the lifeline.
Then find the two strands that are the Merino/Bamboo/Nylon and give a yank. This will start them unravelling from the larger piece. I wind one into a small ball as I unravel and then pin it to the main piece with the safety pin.
Now, onto the cuff. I cast on 72 stitches on size 1 needle, 24 stitches on each needle, and knit a k2 p2 cuff starting with the lead thread. If you see the color changes at the top of the flat, it starts with lime, then pear, then a little tan, then chocolate brown. Easy peasy.
Top of the sock flat, showing the color changes lime, pear, tan, chocolate, a thin line of tan, and more chocolate
For the heel flap, I took the ball I had unravelled and set aside, and separated the strands. This became the heel flap and heel cup. You can see that section in the flat knit piece in the photo above. It is the section that is the second thick brown stripe with a tan stripe underneath. It worked perfectly for the flap and cup.
Flat Knit Section for the Instep Decreases Instep Decreases
Okay, almost done with the dissection. Now I just need to wait for the electrical storm... just kidding...
Seriously, the next section is the straight-knit foot section, which due to the monstrous size of my feet, goes on forever. So I chose the previously-unraveled white and indigo diagonal stripe. It's interesting how the white/ecru area with the indigo make a pattern slightly evocative of arrowheads. See this result inspires me to try different contrasts and larger sections of diagonal striping...
Next, two socks knit from Cookie A patterns in which I expound on how much I love her pattern writing. One will be from a Sockreligious flat and the other is from a new yarn, Elemental, with a hint of silver.