We’ve enjoyed some fresh snow at the farm. I love to watch and see how much snow the boughs will hold before tipping their load. Alas, this snow in not accumulating, but melting as we head into a January thaw. So instead of snow shoeing, back to knitting it shall be.

I’m looking forward to doing some special knitting projects this winter but haven’t yet settled on what that will be, so in the meantime I’m topping up inventory. Today, from the stash of Noro that simply won’t die…

Kureyon Sock S236

Kureyon Sock S095

Kureyon Sock S149

Kureyon Sock is fingering weight 70% Wool 30% Nylon. The label says to hand wash but I use a delicate cycle on the washing machine with no surprises. Dry flat though.

The yarn is a single ply with much thick and thin and most balls have a fair amount of trash in them. It likes to twirl back on itself while knitting, but I’ve found this greatly reduced if I wind my cakes in the opposite direction to what I usually do – for me, that means cranking counter clockwise on the ball winder.

The socks pictured are all size Small, knit with the 54 cylinder on the Legaré 400.

My Christmas Amaryllis is wonderful this year. Just barely started to open on Christmas day, but within a few days – 4 beautiful blooms. I like to have flowers in the house in any season. But especially in winter, when the bright colours can add a little cheer to the frequently grey skies.

Noro is, I think, the yarn equivalent of crack.

No matter how much I fight with it, it always draws me back in. Eventually, I am powerless but to yield to its call.

This is Noro Taiyo. 50% Cotton 17% Wool 17% Nylon 16% Silk   420m/100g   hand wash/dry flat. This colourway is #S10

It’s a single ply felted yarn, similar in construction to Kureyon Sock and Silk Garden Sock. But with Cotton as the main ingredient. It has a feel not unlike the Silk Garden Sock but it is a much finer yarn (420m/100g vs 302m/100g). There is thick and thin, but not so dramatic as Kureyon, and I think, so far at least, a little more even than Silk Garden as well.

The receipe of this yarn doesn’t have a lot of stretch, for a sock yarn, with only 17% Wool, so I added a single strand of 20 D Lycra to my knitting.

You can see the pattern repeat is huge, with less than two repeats in the 100 g ball.

Both these pairs are size Small, knit with the 54 cylinder on the Legaré 400. WIth the pattern repeat being so long, I actually knit one sock for each pair from one ball. (The inside cuff of the top pair is the pinkish colour that returns below the heels in the second pair.)

As with the other Noro yarns I’ve knit, its prone to twirl-backs, so winding the ball is slower and I also knit a little slower but I’m actually used to it – it just has its ‘own way’.

I like it!

Here is Noro Kureyon in colour # S185 (70/30 wool/nylon; 420m/100g).

This pair of knee socks is size Medium, knit with the 72 cylinder on the Verdun 47.

I had to cut and paste a little with this pair, but I’m chuffed that I got two socks that look like a pair.

I’ve been having some good success, in that regard, with my Noro Knitting. When I (ever so slowly) wind the balls into cakes I cut the yarn every time I hit a knot and start winding a new cake. I keep the cakes from one ball together and in sequence. But note that almost without exception a knot also means some wild leap from one part of the colour pattern to another. Maybe even changing direction of pattern.

Once the bag of 10 balls is wound, then I take the biggest cake I have that looks like I can get a single sock out of it. From that I start knitting, trying to begin at a point in the yarn where there is a colour change. I can only approximate this at best with gradient multi colour changes, but I can get pretty close.

If I don’t have a single cake large enough for a whole sock, then I still take the biggest one and try and figure out where the colour pattern starts and stops.

After one sock, or the better part of one sock, the colour pattern is fairly clear and then I basically splice the other socks using the assorted smaller cakes.

Worthwhile to note than in 40 balls I had only one with no knots.

While slow trudging work, I’m always happier in the end when I’ve got two socks that look related.

Oh. When I’m winding the balls into cakes, I feed the yarn between my left thumb and forefinger, applying little to no pressure, while I crank the ball winder with my right hand. That allows me to feel a knot when one occurs, so I can stop and snip and restart.

The works most of the time, but Noro sometimes splices instead of knotting, and I had a few of those slip by me.

Yeah, I know, I  b*tch a lot about Noro. And no doubt I’ll continue to do so as I knit my way to the bottom of that particular pile in my stash. After that, I’ll never buy it again.

Yeah, I know.That’s a vow I’ve already broken more than once! Damn you Noro!

This is Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn, colour  S229; 70% Wool 30% Nylon; Hand wash recommended (I machine wash on delicate); Dry Flat. 420m/100g

You know I don’t knit Noro very often. The yarn is such a struggle to work with – it takes me almost half an hour just to wind the ball into a cake (vs a few minutes with almost any other yarn) and I have to knit at half speed to catch all the self twirling loops before I knit them in or snag and break the yarn.

And of course there’s all that hay, straw, and shrubbery to sweep up off the floor after working it.

But the colours.

Its always the colours. I have “a few”  bags of Kureyon sitting on my shelf. Eventually the beautiful colours trick me in to forgetting, however brieftly, what a wicked yarn this is to knit!

I knit up the 10 balls in the bag of S229 into knee socks. This pair is size Small, knit with the 72 cylinder on the Verdun 47.

The thick and thin that occurs in Kureyon bothers me. Not because I don’t like the variety of texture it creates – I think that’s great. But why is it the ‘thins’ always sneak up right when knitting a heel or toe – the one place you want they extra strength.

To hedge my bets on that, I added Wooly Nylon to all the heels and toes, whether it look like a thin stretch was coming or not. I feel a lot better knowing the extra reinforcement is there!

Now I’m staring at another bag of Kureyon. It’s calling to me, “knit me; knit me“. To which I reply, “wind thyself into cakes“.

We’ll see who gives in…