What Can You Do with Self-Striping Sock Yarn Besides Knit Socks?

Self-striping sock yarn has become pretty popular lately and quite a few indie dyers (myself included) offer it. It is a labor of love for those dyers who make it--although it takes a lot of work to dye it, it's so much fun to knit! Even using just a basic sock pattern, you can let the yarn do the work and still end up with a really neat pair of socks.

But what if you're not a sock knitter? At the fiber festivals I went to this year, quite a few people stopped to admire my self-striping sock yarn but moved along, saying, "I don't knit socks." But you don't have to move along. If you love self-striping sock yarn but have no idea what you'd make with it, I have some ideas for you.

Think about length of color repeats

The key with self-striping sock yarn is to think about the length of the color repeats. Most dyers make repeats long enough to knit somewhere from 3-8 rounds of a typically sized sock for one color. If you expand the circumference (or width) of a knitted item too far beyond that, the color repeats are going to come more quickly and won't give as much of a striped effect.

For example, knitting a hat with self-striping sock yarn might work, but it also might mean each color shows up for just 1-2 rounds of the hat. Or, for example, if you try a triangular shawl that increases on each row, you'll find that the stripes don't work out evenly as you increase the number of stitches, and at some point you might end up with a stitch count that uses more than one color on just one row, completely losing the striped effect of the yarn. These options might work for you, but you'll have to experiment and take these projects on a case-by-case basis.
 

Use a smaller circumference similar to socks

The first thing you can do is make sure that the rounds in your project are a smaller size, similar to what you'd find with socks. One of my favorite patterns for this is Frankenfingers by Elizabeth Green Musselman. This pattern is for a pair of fingerless gloves--although fingerless isn't quite right as there are fingers; the fingers just don't have tips. Not only do you have the stripes going down the arm of the mitt, but think about the possibilities with the half fingers section: you could knit each one a different color within the self-striping yarn. And you could do each glove differently so they match because of the colors and stripes but have different colors along the fingers. So many possibilities!

Use a narrow width

If you'd prefer to knit something flat rather than in the round, you'll want to keep the width of the item fairly narrow so as to make sure the stripes have enough room to form. It doesn't have to be super narrow. A typical sock has 64 stitches in a round, so as long as you don't go any wider than that in a flat object, you should be fine. You could try a simple garter stitch or stockinette stitch scarf. Or even a ribbed scarf.

But just because you should keep rows on the narrow side doesn't mean you're limited to a narrow finished object. Designer Frankie Brown has a series of "Ten Stitch" patterns that are based on knitting very narrow strips, but joining them in a way to create a much larger item, such as a blanket or a shawl (and joining as you go, not with seaming!). Self-striping sock yarn would be perfect for these patterns!

Ten Stitch Blanket
Ten Stitch Triangle
Ten Stitch ZigZag
Ten Stitch Corner

Knit on the bias

The main benefit of self-striping sock yarn is exactly in its name: it allows you to create stripes without having to change yarn colors and have tons of ends to weave in. So play with that property a bit by trying a project that knits on the bias, which includes chevron patterns.

For example, I knit a Totally Biased cowl using Round Table Yarn Merlin in the Pavilion colorway. The way biased knitting works is that it forms rows at an angle, so it is perfect for showing off the stripes of self-striping yarn.

Biased knitting is also how chevrons are usually created. Just doing a Ravelry search for "chevron" led me to a ton of possibilities for patterns to use with self-striping sock yarn. Here are some of my favorites:

Chevron Sock Yarn Scarf by Amanda Gill (Amanda was my knitting instructor at my LYS back in Indiana!)
Chevron Scarf by Joelle Hoverson
ZickZack Scarf by Christy Kamm
Chevron Cowl by Shannon Sanchez
Waving Chevron Scarf by Lee Meredith

Work Mitered Squares

Another element that is often worked by changing colors of yarn is the mitered square. Let the self-striping do the work for you and see what magical possibilities the mitered square might open for you.

For example, I knit a couple of mitered squares as examples (Round Table Yarns Merlin in Pavilion). You can make a ton of these and sew them together to make a blanket or scarf (there is also a way to join them as you go so you don't have to do any seaming). But I actually decided to make these into Christmas tree ornaments! (I wrote up some notes for what I did on my project page on Ravelry in case you'd like to make these yourself.)

But there are so many things you can do with mitered squares. Here are just a few of the possibilities:

Mitered Square Wrap and Shawl by O/C Knitiot Designs - Deby Lake
Mitered Square iPad Mini Case by Jocelyn Aufseeser
Mini Mochi Mitered Eyelet Shawl by Gail Tanquary
Polar Bear Express - Mitered Square Ornaments by Tess Mattos
Domino Star Stashbuster Afghan by Anita Grahn
Breakwater Shawl by Katherine Matthews

Other Ideas (Share Yours!)

There are lots of other ideas for using self-striping sock yarn that don't quite fit the above categories, such as the Barn Raising Quilt (although technically it's a form of mitered square). Or you could even just make a pom pom (which I also turned into a Christmas tree ornament).

And there were so many other pattern ideas that I saw that I didn't list here because I didn't want to overwhelm you with too many links (although I may have already done that).

So I'd like to invite you to the group bundle I've created over in the KarenDawn Designs/Round Table Yarns group on Ravelry. First, join the group if you haven't already. Once you're a group member, you can add patterns you find that work with self-striping yarn to the bundle. I can't wait to see your suggestions!

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The content in this post was first featured in my newsletter (December 5, 2015). If you'd like to keep up to date on my designs and yarn and receive content like this right in your email inbox, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter.

Making Yarn Lemonade from a Yarn Lemon

I was dyeing some of the Sword in the Stone self-striping, which is yellow, grey, and black.

At the same time in another pot, I was dyeing a new teal colorway. When I took the Sword in the Stone out to dry, I noticed that, somehow, some of the teal dye had splashed onto the yellow section of Sword in the Stone!

I had three skeins of Sword in the Stone involved in this mishap and I was hoping that the teal was just on one or maybe two of the skeins. But when I reskeined the three skeins, there was teal on all three. What to do? Dye is transparent rather than opaque, so whatever is underneath a color will still show through (so I couldn't just redye those spots with yellow). I debated several options and decided that I'd try overdyeing the whole skein in teal.

This is how it came out (before and after). You can see some of the yellow still coming through the teal.

At first, I was just going to have these three skeins be a Quest colorway (meaning not repeatable), but I got a lot of positive response on this colorway on Instagram and at the Blackland Prairie Artisan and Fibre Faire last year. And all three skeins sold quickly. So I've given this colorway a name, and will occasionally offer it in the shop and at festivals. And if it's not available, but you do see some Sword in the Stone in the shop, just let me know that you'd like this overdyed version, and I'd be happy to dye it for you.

This color is now The French Book Saith.

Why that name? It comes from Malory's Morte D'Arthur. While Sir Thomas Malory was in prison (in the 15th century in England), he used the time to write the story of King Arthur, which became one of the greatest works of Arthurian literature. He used various source material while writing his version, including some French sources. Throughout the Morte, Malory often introduces material with the words "as the French book saith"; however, most of the time when Malory uses that phrase, when checking his French sources, scholars have found that the French book did not actually say what Malory claims it did.

In the Middle Ages, having source material and proving that you were using the source material was actually a way of legitimizing the text being written. Although stories were certainly created "from scratch," most stories were different versions of a prior story (and many scholars, including myself, spend a lot of time comparing versions to see what is different, which is usually where commentary and analysis come into play). So for Malory, using this phrase would give legitimacy to what he was writing, even when (especially when) the text was something Malory was introducing into the story rather than something from his source material.

So I felt this name was appropriate for this overdyed yarn since it is technically a version of one of the other colorways and yet at the same time is something all on its own.

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The content in this post was first featured in my newsletter (November 5, 2015). If you'd like to keep up to date on my designs and yarn and receive content like this right in your email inbox, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter.

Behind the Scenes: Self-striping sock yarn Reskeining Process

So now I have the yarn dyed, but it's still in that gigantic loop. I need to get it into the smaller circumference skein so it is ready to go to a new home. (Could you imagine if I sent out the giant loop? What would you think?)

This is when I go back to the warping reel and put the yarn back in place. I go through and cut off all of those choke ties I had put on, thankful that I took the time to do that because it makes putting the skein back on the warping reel much easier. I then combine the warping reel with my swift (using it as a skein winder) and wind the yarn back down into a more manageable sized skein. This doesn't take as long as winding the yarn onto the warping reel, but it can easily take up to an hour depending on how many skeins are on there (2-4 usually).

Once I have the yarn reskeined, I twist it up and label it and sigh. Yes, it was a lot of hard work. But imagine the socks it will make!

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The content in this post was first featured in my newsletter (August 5, 2015). If you'd like to keep up to date on my designs and yarn and receive content like this right in your email inbox, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter.

Behind the Scenes: Self-striping sock yarn Dyeing Process

The dyeing itself can be done in a few ways. I've seen people using mason jars within a water bath (either crock pot or pot on the stove), but my current setup isn't big enough to hold multiple mason jars, so I'm using a different method. I dye one color (sometimes two) at a time.

I find the colored ties and choose one section, placing it in the dye pot. I use the crock pot lid to hold the yarn in place. I let that color set and then move onto the next section and dye it. I continue like that until I've dyed all of the colors. If I am doing four colors, I will sometimes dye the sections opposite one another at the same time, using two crock pots. But this means that I'm technically going through the dye process 2-4+ times for each colorway, which can take up almost an entire day's worth of dyeing time!

Problem!

I was moving right along with my self-striping dyeing and then I hit a huge problem. Color creep. This pink/green colorway pictured below (Erec and Enide Variant) is a good example of that. I dyed the pink first and then when I dyed the green, the dye just moved right on past that crock pot lid and into the pink, creating a 2-4 inch section of a dark color. No! I really wanted much cleaner transitions between colors.

I tried multiple fixes, including using clips or super tight choke ties at the color changes, but that still didn't work well.

Then I got that spin dryer I mentioned in the last newsletter. So I soaked the yarn like usual but then put it through the spin dryer before putting it into the dye pot, thinking that if the yarn was less wet, the color might not wick too far into the other section. I then put the yarn through the spin dryer in between each section of dyeing.

I also added gravity to the mix. Before, I had a shallow bowl that I placed beside the crock pot to hold the sections of yarn that were not being dyed. Now I use a tall bucket so the yarn is coming down into the crock pot (which is what is shown in the above picture).

These two factors (dryer yarn and gravity) seem to have done the trick and I'm getting much cleaner transitions between colors now. Whew!

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The content in this post was first featured in my newsletter (August 5, 2015). If you'd like to keep up to date on my designs and yarn and receive content like this right in your email inbox, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter.

Behind the Scenes: Self-striping sock yarn set-up process

I don't know about you, but self-striping sock yarn has become a favorite of mine. I always have a "plain vanilla" sock on the needles so when I want to knit but not think too much about my knitting, I can work on it. It's also a great travel project and is what I usually bring to my weekly knit night. But doing a plain sock over and over again can get boring. Enter self-striping sock yarn! With it, you can have fun watching the stripes progress, wondering what color is coming next, which livens the knitting.

When I was at DFW Fiber Fest in 2015, all the yarn I bought was self-striping sock yarn. At first, I thought I wouldn't actually dye any myself, so I needed to get it all from other dyers. But wow! Self-striping yarn can be expensive. Now that I'm actually making it myself, I totally understand why. It's a rather labor-intensive process. But it's so rewarding that it is worth the process, so I've been hard at work developing my own process and colorways. And in this blog post (and upcoming ones), I'll be taking you behind the scenes of how I dye self-striping yarn.

To dye yarn so it creates stripes as it is knit, long sections of each color need to be dyed. But if you just take a skein of yarn as it is sent from the supplier, the loop of the skein has a small diameter. To get the long sections of yarn for each color, the first step is to reskein the yarn into a very very large skein. Dyers have various methods to do this and I've tried three, finally settling on one as the method that works best for me.

A warping board. In many ways this was the easiest to get the yarn into a loop, but getting it off the warping board is not so much fun because each section actually contains both "sides" of the loop, which need to be separated. Maybe I wrapped the yarn too tightly, but I had a hard time separating the two sides of the loop.

The kitchen chair method. Place two kitchen chairs far apart from one another and walk the yarn around and around. Although I got a lot of steps in while doing this method, I have a three (almost four)-year-old boy and three cats, who were all super interested in the yarn. Plus I wasn't sure if I would be able to get the chairs the exact same distance apart each time and worried about the chairs moving while I was working.

A warping reel. Ah! So much better. With this, I can wrap the yarn around and around while rotating the reel. I can make skeins of various circumferences, and it's more contained than the chair method, so although it is tempting for the cats, it's easier to keep them away from it. Plus, the two sides are separated which makes removing it from the reel much easier.

So based upon how many stripes I'm going to be doing, I'll wrap the yarn a certain number of times around the warping reel. I also do more than one skein at a time (again, depending on the number of stripes), which is really helpful.

Once I have the yarn reskeined, I have to remove it from the warping reel. But dealing with a gigantic skein of yarn can lead to tangles, so the major key here is to add lots and lots of choke ties. So before taking it off the warping reel, I cut short lengths of a white cotton yarn and create loose choke ties throughout the entire skein.

I also have a colored cotton yarn that I use to measure off the increments to know how much of each color to dye (so if I'm going to do four even stripes, I'll measure and divide the skein into four parts and place colored ties to mark them).

It varies depending on how many skeins I do at once (2-4) and how big the circumference is, but it generally takes me well over an hour to prepare the skeins. And I haven't even started dyeing it yet! 
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The content in this post was first featured in my newsletter (August 5, 2015). If you'd like to keep up to date on my designs and yarn and receive content like this right in your email inbox, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter.