Oh. I found a few balls of Opal Traumfänger (Dream Catcher) Colour #1231 hiding in my stash.

I forgot I’d coveted this colourway and hid some away to savour later! I had the entire Dream Catcher series,but this was my personal favourite.  I love how fairly ordinary tones of blue, green and yellow can be kicked into a pizzazz with a dollop of hot pink!

Opal Traumfänger: 75% Superwash Wool 25% Nylon; 425m/100g; Machine wash on delicate; dry flat.  This p[air, size Medium knit with 72 cylinder on Verdun 47.

I haven’t added new Opal to my stash for a few years now. I was getting ticked at the number of knots which is most frustrating in a patterned yarn. But I am happy to report there was nary a knot to be found in this ball. I have one ball left. I hope its knotless too!

I actually don’t mind knots THAT much in yarns other than patterned yarns. When I wind my yarn into cakes I run it between my thumb and forefinger so that I can feel a knot (I catch most of them). I cut the yarn at the knot  and start winding a new cake which I place on top of the other cake(s) and then splice when I’m knitting. But when this happens in a patterned yarn its often the case that the pattern is interrupted or even changes directions – that’s the frustrating part.

Here, from stash, is Opal mit kostbarer Seide (with expensive Silk) colour # 1357. 425m/100g. 70% Superwash 30% Silk.

I never noticed before, my this entire stash of this series is dye lot #1. I don’t remember if it was a test yarn, or what the story was with it.

It’s a decent yarn. I’ve never knit ‘a bunch’ in a row of this, rather I grab a ball when I’m short on man socks with a blue base. I’ve got 6 colourways, all blue + something.

I worked with two balls on this pair. As fate would have it the two balls I picked started at the same point in the pattern. I’ve been knitting all so much variegated and solid lately I didn’t remember to look at pattern repeat with this one. So bonus.

The reason I started with two balls – these are size XXL (mens US/CAN shoe size 16). I knew there was no way this pair was going to squeak off a single ball!

I knit them with the 84 needle cylinder on the Legare 400. I swatched a leftover of this yarn from a previous knit and set my tension to give me 12 rows per inch.  That translated into to under 9 stitches per inch which gave me the 5″  wide sock tube I was seeking.

The socks weighed in at 140 grams for the pair. Good news of a sort – it means I should be able to get 2 pair from 3 balls if I don’t get tangled up in pattern matching.

I’ve knit size 16 socks with the 72 cylinder using a heavier sock yarn like Patons Kroy, and on those the knit is a nice solid weave and still an appropriate width of sock. But with this Opal Silk – a more typical fingering weight sock yarn, my tension would have been too loose on the 72 to get the same 5″ width, and I don’t think the resulting knit would feel as nice under foot.

Here is a pair of knee socks knit with Opal Hundertwasser, series 1, colourway 637A. (75% Wool 25% Nylon 400m/100g)

Recall that Opal based the Hundertwasser series on the work of Austrian painter Friedensreich Hundertwasser.

637A is named Wartende Hauser (Waiting Houses) after this painting:

The socks are size Medium +, knit with the 72 needle cylinder on the Verdun 47.

I have a love/hate relationship with Opal. This is one of my favouritest favouritest sock yarn colourways of all time, and the Hundertwasser series 1 is one of my favouritest series ever. On the downside, I have had many discouraging moments with knots mucking about with beautiful Opal  patterns ;o(   I was in luck with the two balls it took to knit these knee socks… nary a knot to be found.

O happy day….

A while back I blogged about Opal Hundertwasser #650….and how I was looking for a few balls of it.

Thanks to a tip from reader, I found some at Fuzzy Mabel’s in South Carolina.

It arrived the other day, so Birgit will have her knee socks for Christmas.

I had become disenamoured with Opal after knitting bags and bags of it. It seems I couldn’t knit 10 rows without hitting a knot and, frequently, a change in pattern resulting from the knot. But Birgit really loves this colourway!

To my delight,I didn’t encounter a single knot in the two balls I used to knit these Knee Socks. Not only that, but Fuzzy Mabel obliged my request to send balls that started around the same place in the pattern.

I’m very pleased with the result, and newly re-enamoured with Opal!

Opal’s Hunderwasser series was right up there with my favourites (like Regia’s first Kaffe Fassett series).

The series was based on colours used in paintings by the Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser and this particular colourway, #650 is named der Blaue Mond (Blue Moon) after his painting of the same name.

I knit up the last two balls in my stash of Snake – # 1611 from the Opal Rainforest series.

The dyes are pretty intense in this colourway, which makes for a little stiffer cranking, so I loosed my tension 1/8 turn for the the top pair – size Large, on the 72 cylinder, and 1/4 turn for the bottom pair – size Medium, on the 54 needle cylinder.

The two balls I had of this yarn started at different places in the pattern so I didn’t try and line up the two socks. When I have a whole bag of a colourway I’ll often wind them all at once, then pair them off in groups that start at close to the same point in the pattern, and then trim one ball back so the two start at exactly the same point.

Of course it often happens that I get two balls starting at the same point only to find a knot/shift in the pattern after 10 rows into the second sock. I hate when that happens!

I didn’t try to match these two pair up…I just started the second sock where the first sock left off. With this kind of stripe and fairly short repeat, I think it works fine.

I’m not sure how I feel about wearing snakes on my feet.  Snakes have pretty much grossed me out since I was  – when my pet snake Willie bit me.

But I do like this pattern, and the socks have no teeth….