PORTFOLIO
OTHER PROJECTS
ABOUT
RESUME
FADING INTO THE COLORWORK
November 30, 2021
Knowing that the end of this month into next month would be busy, I decided to do a relatively simple pair of socks. I was originally inspired by a set I saw from DROPs (their Miss Fox socks and mittens) I stuck to a basic vanilla I’m familiar with, but I wanted to play with the transition between two contrasting colors. This pair is a bit more experimental in the sense that I knew going into it that I would want to make changes for any future iteration, but I wanted to see how a pair would come out. I did toy around the idea of iterating between socks, but decided that I’d rather have a matching pair that showed me where I wanted to make changes.
The yarns for these are ULA + LIA’s Baby Camel Wool in Burnt Copper and some leftover Cloudborn Superwash Merino Twist in Oatmeal Heather from last month’s socks. There was no pattern consulted other than my own drafted chart. My process for these socks was to essentially make one sock and then try to copy it, counting rows and making notes along the way.
These were knit cuff down with 64 stitched around, starting with the Oatmeal Heather through the 1x1 twisted rib cuff (20 rows) and some leg (8 rows) before incorporating the Burnt Copper to start the transition. For the transition, I charted it using StitchFiddle. Knowing that I wanted to do stranding, I kept the repeats short, only 4 stitches across. And since I wanted to make the transitions happen fairly quickly, I tried to keep the fade relatively short (24 rows). Between rows 1 and 12, Color 1 was held dominant, and between rows 13 and 24, Color 2 was held dominant.
I decided to do a contrasting heel (an Eye of Partridge heel) in the Oatmeal Heather, thinking it’d provide some balance, and kept to the Burnt Copper for most of the leg and foot. At about 3 inches minus the finished length, I started the transition back to Oatmeal Heather and ended the toe with that. When there were 6 stitches on each needle (12 total stitches), I kitchener stitched them close, then wove in the ends and blocked.
There are a couple of things I would want to modify with this pattern in the future.
- Shorten the amount of Color 1 at the top of the leg. Instead of my 8 rows of Oatmeal Heather, I think I should have done 5.
- Shorted the transition at the toe. Instead of the 24 rows like at the top, I would remove the first and last 4 rows.
- Start the toe transition earlier. I thought I would want the denser part of the fade near where the toe starts to taper, but instead I would rather have more of plain Oatmeal Heather to make the toe look longer. There’s not much space to make a fox face as is if I were inclined to follow my initial inspiration.
- Adjust the chart to work better in the round. I think it can be better optimized for working in the round. Currently at the beginning of the round there are stitches adjacent that I would rather there not be, particularly for rows 12 and 13.
- Adjust the chart to have symmetry along the median line. The current chart doesn’t have that symmetry and while not too off, I think it would be nicer if it did. It might also help with making it work better in the round.
Looking at how the fade works at the toe, I think I want to make some changes to the transition as well. Perhaps making it less regular. Perhaps shortening the transition for both colors. Perhaps shortening the transition for just one color. There are a couple of different directions I could imagine taking, I’d just have to make some samples and decide which I like best.
Even though there are some things that I would want to change, overall I’m pretty happy with them and how they came out. It was a fun exercise for me and an opportunity to try out my own pattern. I like how they’re pretty simple but still interesting. Even if not the final version of this pattern, I know I’ll get a lot of wear out of them and enjoy wearing them.