Rainbow Socks

I recently acquired a Knittax S knitting machine and to thank the original owner, I am making him socks.

The yarn I’m using is Alpaca 4ply Sock: 60% Superwash Merino 20% Superfine Alpaca 20% Nylon sock yarn, purchased from Chester Wool. This yarn is so soft, I love it. It was hand dyed by using it as the ‘cleaning tool’ when making up some pots of citric acid with Eurolana dyes. The spoons that were used to put the dye in the pots, was wiped on the wet yarn. The distribution of colours is basically ‘which bit is still too white’. Colours are black, brown, grey, orange, yellow, soft yellow, red, magenta, violet, blue, navy, turquoise and green. They came out quite muted, but I do like them. When knitted up, they are more obvious than on the ball.

As for the socks, the instruction booklet for the knitting machine came with patterns in the back so I chose to make the basic socks for men. The pattern is in the images (in Dutch, translation for the image below). For the first try, I cast on exactly as intended, but chose setting 5 on the machine. These socks turned out quite large so I frogged them and started again on a setting 4 on the machine. The length that came out on setting 4 matched the book, so that seemed to have gone well. I’m not sure if I’m seaming them right, they feel quite bulky and I’m not sure that’s nice on the foot. I’ve also discovered that knitting takes about as much time as the seaming. The knitting is very quick, this machine goes a hell of a lot faster than I ever can by hand.

After finishing one sock, I brought it to the original owner to try on. He claimed that they were indeed the right size and that the ridges of seaming wouldn’t be annoying. As he’s been wearing machine knit socks like this for a long time, I’m inclined to believe him. So then I set out the knit the second sock with the same settings. It took me a few goes and a lot longer than it should have but in the end, sock number 2 was finished. Before seaming it together it does look really strange and not what you expect. Once the seaming is finished however, it does look like socks. I’m amazed.

I really enjoyed the process, can’t wait to make more things on this machine!