Over the knee socks take me a lot more time to knit, so when I’ve got the 100 needle cylinder set up I like to make ‘a number’ of pair and resign myself to a smaller pile of inventory to show for my work.
Here’s a selection Koigu KPPPM that I chose for this project:
From the left,
- 3 x 50 g P853
- 1 x 50 g P822
- 1 x 50g P706
- 1 x 50g P731
The colours are fairly true on my screen, with the exception of the P822 which looks much less green than it really is.
When I finished a pair of Size Medium Thigh Highs, this is what I had left of the 6 skeins:

About 28g of the P853, and 3 g of each of the others.
The spool of mossy green Woolly Nylon is to show what I used to reinforce the heels and toes. Normally I try to match (given my limited library) the heel and toe colours, but this time I went with pairing to the greens.
Here is the top of one sock, knit with the 100 cylinder on the Legare 400:
Here again, the colours are fairly true except the P822 which again looks less green than I think it really does.
The hem top is knit in a mock rib 9:1, then all needles in once the body of the sock begins. The blue yarn is the scarp yarn I used to run the top off the cylinder. After the hem top I’m working in 10 rows of each colour.
And here is the sock in progress after rehanging on the 72 needle cylinder.

I’m a good portion down the leg in this photo. You can see the blue scrap yarn where I attached the top onto this cylinder.
Shortly after this photo, I switch to a 3:1 mock rib on the top of the instep (removing 9 needles) to narrow the pre-heel and foot. I replace those needles 4 or 5 rows before the toe to make the kitchener easier.
You can see I’m using a 6-hole topper. (Reminds me, when I was a kid at camp we had a 6 holer!)
In theory this makes all the colour changes easier because each yarn is already threaded. In truth its a bit of a nuisance. I think it may save more time if knitting from cones, but knitting from rewound balls I found I had to knit fairly slowly to avoid the yarn swooping as it comes of the ball – and grabbing the yarn from the strand adjacent.
It’s actually the first time I’ve used this piece of original equipment that was standard with the Verdun 47. I’m going to experiment with better yarn containers and whatever tweaking I can think of. The colour changes themselves were MUCH faster. Also some yarns swoop more than others (can you say NORO?) and some less so, and that may be a factor when deciding if to use this or not.
ANYWAY….here are the socks:

Now on my screen, my notorious colour B (P822) is closer to reality, while the hem top colour appears much darker than it it – which is a truly rich concoction of wines and purples and greens.