Category Archives: Viking

Easter Socks

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Tonight is the first in three days of services for the Easter Triduum, Holy Thursday. There is another service tomorrow for Good Friday, and then the Easter Vigil, at sundown on Saturday.

There are colours associated with each of these days – Black for Holy Thursday, Red for Good Friday and Yellow for Easter Vigil.  Red and Black socks, I have. But this year I decided to knit myself some yellow socks to wear, with my yellow golf shirt, to the Vigil service.

I ended up making two pairs, and I haven’t yet decided which I will wear.

This first pair is knit with 100% Pure Milk and I added in a strand of 20 denier lycra throughout the entire knit. This is a soft butter yellow colour # 940, the reason I chose it. The milk yarn, by Viking of Norway comes in 50g balls which are about 165 m. It took me about 2.5 balls to knit this pair of size Large socks with the 72 cylinder on the Verdun 47.

I used a tension of 1/4 turn looser than my standard tension for this size. Partly because I was adding a strand of lycra, and partly because the milk yarn has little elasticity so is a little stiffer on the knit – like a pure cotton or a high content silk. That gave me a good gauge. The intial row of ribbing was quite a tough crank, and after that I would call it ‘stiff’.

This is a beautiful fibre. When first knit it feels on the canvas side, but after a wash or two its just like the softest cotton or merino. I knit myself a test pair of these in blue last year, without lycra. They were extremely soft, yet have been very durable. However, without the lycra they didn’t want to stay up so well and I’ve since been wearing them as house-socks or bed-socks on a really cold night.

This second pair is a much brighter yellow. It is not quite a primary sun yellow – I added a tiny bit of black to the dye pot when I dyed this, just to take the edge off the colour. This is my own lambs wool blended 70% with 30% nylon, woolen spun in a single ply.

The pattern is my adaptation for Sock Knitter of Nancy Bush‘s Welsh Country Stockings.

I actually increased the length of the leg in this pair by about an inch and a half so I can wear them in my hiking boots. I love the loft of this fingering weight yarn – like a half weight sport socks – perfect for warmer weather hiking – comfort from the loftiness, absorbancy from the wool, strength from the nylon. But without the weight of the heavier socks I wear in cold weather.

As a cantor, I’ll be in the choir loft (out of sight) on Saturday night, so I’ll likely be in sock feet. I wonder which pair I’ll end up wearing…

Coffee Cup Sox

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Here are my Coffee Cup Sox – well, one of them – that are my entry into the coffee cup theme competition at the Toronto One of a Kind show.

I hope the photo actually appears! I’m blogging from my bb as isp has been down, yet again, for 6 days.

I adapted a pattern from Jenny Deters ( www.spinsister.com ) I took the argyle pattern on the foldover cuff, and replaced the center part of the motif with my crude coffee cup.

To get the coffee cups upright and to avoid a million ends showing inside the sock – I began with Jenny’s pattern for the foldover cuff and intarsia knit diamonds. But I left the coffee cups off.

After knitting to the point of hanging the hem, I tied on scrap and knit the topper of the csm, much like I do with thigh highs. Then I duplicate stitched the little coffee cups and rehung the work on my cylinder. After a few rows knitting I hung the hem. This placed all my ends inside the cuff, out of sight.

The rest of the sock is pretty basic. As this is a smaller ladies size, and for some visual interest, I started a 5:1 mock rib a few rows after hanging the hem. I carried this on until 30 rows before the heel – at that point I changed the top of the foot side to 2:1 and went to stockinette on the back/bottom.

All knitting done on the 72 cylinder.

The coffee coloured yarn is my own fingering weight 75/25 wool/nylon, dyed in actual Hazelnut Vanilla coffee. The argyle diamonds are 100% Milk from Viking of Norway, and the coffee cups are 100% spun sugar from Araucania’s Ruca Mully.

The sugar was hard to work with for duplicate stitching. It has many fine strands that don’t really stay plied. And using a dk-sport weight to duplicate stitch into a fingering weight – well it was trying at times!

Make Mine Milk

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When I bought some Milk Yarn, it was more of a lark than anything else. I saw something written about it – I forget where – and immediately panicked because I didn’t have any in my stash. (Problem solved.)

When it arrived I concluded it wouldn’t suit for socks. It feels LOVERLY but lacks stretch – in many respects like a pure silk or a greek Cotton. I didn’t even think my sock knitter would be able to stretch it enough to form a stitch.

Of course you never know if you don’t try.

The pair of Golf Socks above is size Large, knit with the 72 cylinder. I first knit only one sock. Astonished that it fed nicely through the knitter, I finished it off, washed it in the machine and traipsed around the house like Wee Willy Winky.

Successful enough to warrant a full trial, so I knit up the second sock. I have them on right now!

For having no apparent stretch, the socks are so far staying up. It seems a strong yarn – hard to break by hand.  I’m not sure if tensile strength translates into wearing strength.  I’ll see how the testing goes. I suppose I could add some wooly nylon or lycra to deal with any short comings.

Pure Milk Fiber by Viking of Norway.  100% Pure Milk.  Colour #920. 165m/50 g (It took me 42 g per short sock)