Northbrook Designs

Socks Socks Socks 

For a little change of pace, how about sock talk. I've knit socks in the traditional way in the past, but not recently. Earlier this year, i discovered sock looms. Who knew. Sock looms make life so much easier as I've discovered. When your hands start aching from the amount of work we do in our lives, no wonder they revolt. 

Sock looms take most of the stress off our tender over worked hands. These are the looms I have been using. 

These are available through Knitting Boards in the US. Here in Canada you can find them at Sitich it Central. You will see two colours of looms in that listing,  that's because they are sold as a 2 pack. Ladies and mens sizes. I bought 2 packages so I can work on two socks at a time. You don't have to do that, I just find it easy to do and it keeps them the same length as you work. 

The tape across the lower front is a guide for decreasing and increasing for the heels and toes. I am left handed, so my guide goes left to right. Should you try these looms and are right handed, the numbers would go from right to left. Here is a link you will find so helpful. It takes you through making socks from start to finish. It's very well recorded and you can stop and start, or rewind to watch parts over again.  Sock making with this loom.  

I bought a couple of accessories to work with, but not necessary to be able to knit the socks. First are these sock frames. They came as a 2 pack on Amazon. When you finish your socks, you can wash them and put them onto a frame to shape them. I do a light iron on them using a press cloth.

The other accessory I got, was this bowl. It's so convenient to keep my yarn from drifting all around my work space. ;o) I thread it through one of the holes on the side and it also keeps the yarn from getting tangled. The two colours of small pins in the envelope are stitch markers, and I found them on Knit Pics, but you can find many fancy and otherwise on Etsy.

These are the socks I knit with the loom. 

 

The yarn I use is from Arcane Fibre Works. They are based in Alberta, Canada. They have a newsletter and if you sign up, you will receive regular updates as to new colourways. Some are short term, some last longer. I just got these two skeins last week, so bright and cheerful. (Fingering weight for socks)

The last sock for this post, is the pretty blue and white sock next to the bowl in the picture above. That one is crocheted. The pattern is by a Russian designer, Miss Kochina. The instructions are good, but I recommend using a scrap ball of yarn to practice on, unless you find you are familiar with her work. She offers a link to her YouTube site to show you the stitches.