Book Review – 52 Weeks of Socks: Beautiful patterns for year-round knitting

52 Weeks of Socks is a modern collection of sock patterns from Nordic knitting experts Laine. What is more special than a pair of hand-knitted socks? Perfect for curling up at home on cozy winter evenings and crisp autumn mornings, or for hiking adventures over spring afternoons and summer nights, knitted socks are the ultimate small luxury.

Whether they’re a treat for yourself or a heartfelt gift, there’s love in every stitch. Knitting is more than just knit, knit, purl. It is a feeling. This whimsical book contains a beautiful pair of socks for every week of the year. That’s 52 sock patterns contributed by 46 leading knitwear designers from across the world, suitable for knitters of all abilities. Each uses different yarns and techniques, including projects with stunning stitch definitions and classic slippers for beginners.

From sole to toe, these easy-to-follow patterns will sweep you up with stunning photography and styling that evokes the inspiring Nordic landscape and slow living. 52 Weeks of Socks is a book to treasure and return to again and again, not just for weeks but for years to come

When I was looking around for free knitting patterns to share recently, I came across this fun leopard print wrap from Yarnspirations.

This fun bulky wrap gives you tons of practice with instarsia and makes a bold statement while keeping you warm. It’s rated for intermediate knitters and the design is charted but pretty easy to follow. And it’s only 50 rows and worked in bulky yarn, so it wouldn’t even take that long to knit. (You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.)

So what’s the problem? The yarn that the pattern calls for has been discontinued, and it’s not a yarn that a substitute for immediately springs to mind.

The original yarn was Patons Alpaca Blend, a single ply bulky yarn that was a combination of acrylic, superwash wool, nylon and alpaca.

My first thought was Lion Brand Hue + Me, which is an acrylic and wool blend, with two plies instead of a single. It looks like it has the colors you would need to make this fun shawl.

But as I was thinking about it, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to YarnSub if you don’t already know about it. This website is a giant database of yarn that can consider the qualities of the yarn you want to substitute and offer potential substitutions.

It’s not only thinking about yarn weight, like I was, but also fiber content, number of plies, gauge and even the difference in yardage between one ball and another. It even looks at the price and can be filtered by your price range or preferences about fiber content (if, say, you’re sensitive or allergic to wool, for example, or don’t want to you acrylic).

When I plugged in Alpaca Blend, it gave me a lot of different options, though many of them were self-striping or multicolored, which wouldn’t work for this project, and I don’t see a way to filter for solid colors only.

Still, it’s a good tool to give you some ideas you might not know about or might have forgotten about, and it tells you how the new yarn is similar to the old one and how it differs, allowing you to make smarter choices when substituting yarns.

[Photo: Yarnspirations]

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