Scrappy Striped Socks

 

A few weeks ago I saw a pair of socks on Pinterest.  They were plain stockinette socks with a ribbed cuff, but they were knit from fingering weight scraps left over from other projects.  I didn't even take time to pin the original idea (sorry) before I was upstairs sorting through my own leftovers!

I decided to use mainly pinks and reds with a little bit of orange and my tiny remaining bit of Cosmic Wonder Dust (the white speckled stripe in each leg).  I pulled 80 grams of yarn for this project and when I was done, I had three grams left - next time I'll get a little bit more just for breathing room!

Once I had my yarns, I carefully divided them in half and then bagged the halves separately so I'd have equal amounts of each yarn for each sock.  I could have just started knitting but I was afraid I'd end up with one sock more red than the other if I didn't divide the yarns.  I also picked specific yarns for cuffs, heels, and toes.  I felt like that would help tie the socks together as a pair.

I know what you're thinking - what about all those ends?  Well, I kind of cheated.  I didn't want to weave in thousands of ends either, so I did it as I went.  As I was getting ready to switch colors, I cut my working yarn about 10 inches long and then folded it back on itself.  Then I took the end of the next yarn and threaded it through the loop and let it fold back on itself about five inches.  Then I knit with the yarn doubled and when I ran out of the working yarn, the next stitch was the new yarn and I just kept going.  At the end I had some yarn tails to trim, but the only ends that needed weaving in were the beginning and ending ones!

The one thing about this end management technique is that the doubled yarn sections gave me fewer rows per inch than I usually get in fingering weight socks, so I almost went too far on the foot before beginning the toe decreases.  I should also note that I didn't start and stop new colors at the same place on the sock.  I rotated my joins around the circumference of the sock and just let the color jogs fall where they would.

This was such a great pair of socks to knit that I'll definitely be doing these again.  The random stripes were fun, but I started wondering if I could blend the colors from one shade to another - kind of a sock fade!