From my stash of Fortissima‘s Mexiko Cotton Stretch series, in colour #31 – Reef. 41% Superwash Wool 39% Cotton 13% Nylon and 7% Polyester.

I’m pretty careful about scouting for knots when I rewind sock yarn for knitting. With this yarn there aren’t many knots, and the ones that do exist are so well tied that they don’t create an annoying princess-pea in the fabric. They do, however, interrupt the pattern. You can see on the Right sock, near the bottom of the leg, where the jacquard does a quick repeat.

I’m just sayin.

The pair (above pics) is size Small +, knit with 72 cylinder and 36 ribber on the Verdun 47. I knit a 1.x1 rib top and a 5×1 ribbed leg and instep. This is a mid-calf length sock.

And here is the same sock but in size Small, also mid-calf length, using a 3×1 rib on the leg and instep instead of the 5×1.

From my stash – Fortissima Socka, Cotton Stretch in colour #39. 41% Superwash Wool 39% Cotton 13% Nylon 7% Polyester. Wash/Dry delicate/perm press.

The above pics are all of a Size Small pair knit with the 72 cylinder on the Verdun 47. They are a mid-calf sock, with a 1×1 rib top and a 5×1 rib leg and instep.

This pair is Size Medium, knit with the same cylinder at a looser tension. The topper is still 1×1 but I knit the leg and instep in stockinette instead of the 5×1 rib.

This picture shows the Small pair on top, the Medium pair on bottom, and a mid-size (Small+) pair in between. I knit all on the same cylinder but at different tensions, and slight pattern modifications: longer in the leg and foot, ribbing in the small sizes, longer topper on the medium.

Here is another pair of Argyle Socks – this time in Browns.

Fortissima Socka 100, 420m/100g; Main Colour – # 2072 Camel; Diamonds: #2071 Brown (I’d call it deep chestnut brown) and #2073 Sand.

This pair is size Large, knit with the 72 cylinder and 36 ribber on the Verdun 47.

A neat thing about argyles – its just like knitting a whole bunch of heels (all over the place).

I was just about to start knitting some Size Large boring man socks and I couldn’t face making another solid colour sock, for now.

But since I already had some of the Fortissima greys wound and ready to go, I decided to make this pair of Argyle Sox. 75/25 Wool/Nylon, with main colour #2058 and diamonds in dark #2059 and light #2055.

I haven’t done argyle for a while, so I made these in my size in case they were seconds. I had already planned to wear them to church today. (But the blizzard settled in over the farm means no churchifying today, and the socks aren’t seconds anyway!)

This was a pleasant distraction from regular knitting. As good as a day off.

I used the e-wrap selvedge that I blogged about the other day, on a 1×1 ribbed top.

I guess there are no rules about it, but for argyles I lean to using a medium tone main colour with dark tone and light tone diamonds.

I knit these with the 72 cylinder and 36 ribber dial on the Verdun 47. The pattern is based on the one in the CD SockMachine Knitting – First 10 Years of Patterns  

The sample pattern was for a 60 cylinder so I jiggled the math and also fiddled the pattern a bit to accommodate diamonds that were an even number of stitches(18 on the 72) vs an odd number (15 on the 60).

From stash, this is Fortissima Socka Color # 9048  75/25 Superwash Wool/Nylon; 420m/100g

This pair is size Small +, and is an example of the narrower version of this size that I knit for a narrower foot – so, Ladies 8-9 AB. (Compared to my immediately preceding post showing Lorna’s Laces Pocket Square in this size but for B or EEE width.)

For this pair, knit with the 72 needle cylinder, I’ve done a 1×1 ribbed topper and a 5×1 leg and instep.

Here’s a group of size Small socks knit from my stash of Fortissima Socka Color, Zebra Series. All knit with the 54 cylinder on the Legaré 400.

(I finally noticed that I can put an accented vowel with WordPress. I don’t know if that was there before and I just never noticed! For that matter, I always pronounced the name without the accent and still often do out of habit – should be Leh-gah-ray)

I think this yarn maybe discontinued but I see it here and there on eBay and LYSs.

The colours are, from the left, Black #119, Blue #121, Brown #123, Tan #122, Moss Green #120. (My colour words, their numbers.)   75/25 Superwash Wool/Nylon; 420m/100g.

The black needed a looser tension, as is often the case with a deep black dye. I didn’t back off with the blue and brown but probably could have done a smidge. They cranked ok, just a little more effort.

I remember when I first looked at this yarn at the distributors. I wasn’t particularly moved by it, and the dealer was kind of pushing it so I suspected it may not have been moving well. I mean face it, these are fairly ordinary colours and there are so many spectacular colourways out there.

But what is most popular with knitters, and what is most popular with sock wearers isn’t always the same thing!

One colour + neutral in the sock – so easy to match with wardrobe. A ‘little’ flashy in the patterning of the one colour, so an adventurous step up from basic black, but not over the top intimidating.

Reminds me of my great soxifying epiphany – the day I realized people were buying ONLY my wowzer pizzazy socks and not my plain socks because I wasn’t knitting any plain socks!

And now, a little trivia…. is a group of Zebras called a:

A.  Dazzle

B. Zeal

C. Herd

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↓

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answer – all of the above!

And here’s a pair of Fortissima #1776 in Size Small, knit with the 54 cylinder on the Legare 400.

Happy 4th of July to my US family and friends.

From stash, here’s a pair of Stars n Stripes socks in size Large, knit with the 72 cylinder on the Verdun 47.

Fortissima Socka Color in, cleverly, colour # 1776.

75% superwash wool 25% nylon; 420m/100g

I’ve knit several bags of this over the years, and this pair is from a different batch purchased a few years later.

I consider this lot (dye lot 42098) to be superior to previous lots I’ve knit, in several ways: the reds and blues are much more vibrant; there is much less bleed, the yarn is  much smoother to knit. It actually seems like a finer gauge than the yardage suggests.