Knitting

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Giveaway: Sockupied

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sockupied giveaway

Judith is the winner!

I spent a fair bit of yesterday knitting the heel flap, turning the heel and working the gusset on a sock I’d neglected for more than a year. I’d knit the leg a long time ago and just moved on to other things, as will happen, but I’m trying to finish some things before the end of the year and it felt like a good place to start.

It reminded me how much I love knitting socks, especially that particular part I did yesterday, where the magic happens. It finally feels like you’re knitting a real thing when it curves into a sock shape, and I think that very part may be one of the many reasons so many of us like to knit socks so much.

Whether you know that feeling or have yet to knit your first pair, this week’s giveaway is designed to encourage the sock knitter in you. Sockupied: 20 Knit Projects to Satisfy Your Sock Obsession, edited by Anne Merrow, features patterns and advice from the “pages” of the digital magazine of the same name from Interweave. It includes 20 patterns from basic to slightly mind-blowing, as well as advice on things like working stranded colorwork on socks, casting on, binding off and shaping toes.

Check out all the patterns on Ravelry, and if you’re interested in winning this one, leave a comment on this post before the end of the day Sunday, Dec. 4. I’d love to know how many pairs of socks you have knit and/or your preferred construction method. I usually go with top-down but my toe-up ones are probably my favorites to wear. Go figure.

Thanks for visiting, commenting and sharing, and good luck!

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Comments

  2. I have still never had the opportunity to knit socks. These models are very beautiful and I would like to try!!!

  7. I have knit zero pairs. I am intimidated by socks!
    BUT my goal is to conquer sock knitting in 2017!

  12. I’ve knit 12 (!!!!) pairs of socks this year! I prefer the toe-up construction and a Fish Lips Kiss heel. My favorite pair so far is a No Purl Monkey pattern from Cookie A. It was free on Ravelry and has been a real pleasure to knit with the partridge eye heel. I like to try new construction and the last pattern I knit was a Vanilla Reversed sock.

  14. I have one sock that needs to be finished! just 2″ to the toes and my socks will be complete! Help me finish knitting that pair of socks! Its Christmastime, and my Carolina Panthers aren’t winning!

  15. I love knitting socks. I’m not sure how many I’ve made, but my favorite construction is toe-up. I even make toe up baby socks for new parents!

  16. I am very lucky my sister knits all of my socks for me. I think she prefers the top down version. I know she does both top down and toe up. I would love to win this book for her.

  19. I’ve knit at least 50 pairs, I still love them and have 2 drawers full. I also have 2 drawers full of sock yarn that need a little inspiration.

  24. I knit a pair of socks every month to month and a half. They’re my go-to-meeting knitting, mindless and portable, and my job sadly requires quite a few meetings. I have at least 20 pairs now. I normally do toe-up with a gusset and heel flap, but love exploring different construction techniques.

Have you read?

Knit a Leopard Print Shawl and Learn about Yarn Substitution

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]