A couple of you asked for more information on my Noro socks. First, I’ll answer the question about the striping. A picture is worth a thousand words, so they say.
Yes, I did carry the unused yarn up the inside, creating a seam-type structure inside the sock. I am the kind of person who hates seams in socks and can easily be driven crazy by a lump in my shoe, but I’m pretty sure this one isn’t going to bother me.
I have issues with stripes and whether or not it’s okay to float yarn vertically like this. Every time I teach a two-color knitting class, this question comes up, and my personal opinion is that for two or maybe three rows of skippage, it is probably better to carry the float up like this rather than breaking the yarn and weaving ends back in. Weaving in ends would create a heck of a lot more bulk than this little seam-like structure.
Actually, I specifically chose to do a two-row stripe so that I could feel more comfortable with carrying the yarns up this way than I would with a wider stripe. Also, having an even-numbered stripe made it easier to deal with the yarn while I was doing my short-rows.
Now that I think of it, though, another possibly better alternative would be to do somewhat wider stripes – maybe four rows, even five? – and break the yarn after each stripe but then re-join the new color using a spit-splice. I think maybe if I were to do these socks again, I would do something like that. I mean, nobody’s going to notice the overlapping color change if you do it on the bottom of the foot. It would also help to solve the problem of constantly-tangling yarns in this project. Hm. I do have another ball of this yarn – maybe I’ll have to try out the idea.
I know, by mentioning spit-splices with this yarn, I’m going to raise some alarm bells out there. This yarn is supposedly superwash, and the prevailing assumption out there is that one can’t do a spit-splice with superwash wool. Well, I get away with it all the time when I’m knitting socks. No, you won’t get the same rock-solid join in the two yarns as you do with a feltable fiber, but by overlapping half the plies at each end for a couple-few inches and knitting them together as if they were one, you do get a truly solid join. I even go through the motions of spitting and rubbing them together in my hands, which does seem to help the ends bond even better.
Moving on to the issue of softness in this yarn – well, I really haven’t washed it yet, so I can’t be sure. But I do have a feeling that it is going to fluff up and get softer. I know I’ve seen samples at shops that were washed and quite soft, and the buzz around the internet says so too. Someone asked about Noro Silk Garden and whether it gets softer. I can speak to that one out of direct experience – the answer is a definitive yes. I have a Silk Garden sweater that is quite soft indeed.
Okay, and finally, someone asked about whether washing this yarn before knitting it would be a good idea, whether it would help it be less tangly, and whether it would be worth the hassle to do so. Well, washing yarn really doesn’t have to be that much of a hassle. If you have a swift, or better yet a niddy-noddy, you can simply wind the yarn off the skein and into a big-loop skein. Make sure to tie it off in several places around the circumference to keep from ending up with a tangled mess. Then, soak it in a sink of lukewarm water with a drop of either dish soap or wool wash for a bit, and soak again in a sink of clean water, then hang it up to dry.
Would this process decrease the tangles in this yarn? I’m guessing probably not. There’s a couple reasons why. First, I think it’s pretty sticky fiber that likes to grab itself like velcro. Second, it’s a singles yarn that’s fairly highly energized. Which means it likes to twist up on itself. So you’re still going to have tangly yarn, but at least it might be a bit softer on your hands as you knit it. Worth the trouble of washing? Well, maybe if knitting with somewhat rough yarn bothers you.
Okay! More than most people in the world would ever want to know about the details of my opinions on my new socks.
