Hi friends!
Remember how I promised to show you all of the yarn that was distracting me from my current socks in progress? I couldn’t wait, I’m doing it today. It involved another trip to the park across the street for yarn photography, but my neighbors already think I’m odd so it wasn’t much of a sacrifice.
I’ve decided to start a new series on the blog dedicated to self-striping yarns. I have a bit of an obsession with them, and I’m going to fill my sock drawer with handmade woollies that will cradle my tootsies in cozy warmth and insane colors. I purchased quite a few skeins with my birthday money, and I had a few hanging around already, but I’m having the hardest time just taking the plunge and knitting with them! They seem too precious. So I’m confessing here on the blog, and promising all of you that I will actually knit with my precious self-striping skeins. They will become my travelling socks for the foreseeable future. I’m going to compare and contrast all of them, so you can decide what you might like to get for yourself. )I’m nothing if not an enabler.)
I want to start with a baseline for comparison. I know that it’s discontinued, but I think that Knit Picks Felici is going to be my baseline yarn. It’s self striping and pretty, and it’s a commercial yarn. All the others in the series are hand dyed in small batches, and I’m interested in highlighting the differences between commercial yarns and yarn from indie dyers. So I’ll probably start with these skeins:
It’s Felici in the Jellybean colorway. They’ll be my basis for comparison.
I’ve got Yarn Enabler:
This should knit up into nice fat stripes, which I totally prefer to skinny ones. I can be seduced into knitting skinny stripes by lovely colors, but wide stripes charm me more.
I have this joyful amazingness from Fab Funky Fibers
:
Appropriately titled The Big One, it is a 24 stripe rainbow. My love for it is pure. These socks are either going to be so loved that they have holes immediately, or so cherished that they only get worn once a year. Only time will tell, but I’m totally doing an afterthought heel so that when it wears out I can replace it. They may only be worn when I need exceptional good luck, because I have a firm belief that rainbow socks are lucky, and handknit socks made from hand-dyed rainbow stripes must be extra lucky.
I have this neon brightness from String Theory Colorworks:
This is their Orbit base, a nice tightly plied sport weight sock yarn. I’ve never knit sport weight socks, so I’m interested to see how much more quickly these knit up than my typical socks. The colorway name is Strontium-90, which I am enchanted with. Doesn’t it actually look radioactive?
No list of self-striping yarns would be complete without a spot for Turtlepurl Yarns.
I absolutely had to get this set. It will stripe in the colors of Burberry plaid. That in itself is totally enough, but I am a little obsessed with Burberry. I can’t afford it at this point in my life, but at least with these socks I can pretend to be posh. The coordinating red is for matching heels and toes and cuffs. These will be some tall socks!
I couldn’t decide on simply one, so I got two skeins from White Birch Fiber Arts. 
The skein on the left will alternate rainbow stripes with stripes of blue sky, and the skein on the right will be all Dark Side of the Moon style and alternate rainbow stripes with stripes of black. Very styling.
I got some lovely and coveted Vesper Sock Yarn:
It’s all peaceful blues and greens with a little bit of sand and a dark rich brown. I love these colors together, they’re perfectly harmonious. It looks like a forest spirit was trying to disguise itself as a skein of yarn. Doesn’t it seem just perfect there, nestled in the grass?
Last, but certainly not least, I got some yarn from Twisted Limone Designs.
Isn’t it perfect? Don’t you totally want to come over and fight me for it? The colors are, according to the shop description, blackcurrant, raspberry, dark charcoal, white, grass green, lime green and sea green. If that doesn’t charm you, I don’t know what will. (also you might need to look up some cute pictures of kittens, because your crankiness might be terminal.) I also love the presentation, the hand-wound ball feels like a special gift. I also know that it’s super labor intensive, but it’s so beautiful, opening the package was thrilling.
So that’s everything! A few other skeins may eventually join the party, (I’m currently stalking Coloring Book Yarns, I want some BMO sock yarn because I love Adventure Time.) One last picture with all the yarns together:
Doesn’t it look like almost too much fun? I feel like this will really motivate me to knit socks more and faster. (Also, I so desperately want to just be done with the socks from my last post so I can just enjoy all of these. Maybe they can be short socks. Ankle socks anyone? :P)
Which one is your favorite? I can’t decide.
