Blood drip socks
As you nicely know, my love of vampires is year-round, nevertheless it did work out properly that this primary pair of blood drip socks had been prepared simply in time for Halloween! 🩸🧦🧶 I had the concept for these blood drip socks just a few weeks earlier than and I’m so happy with how they turned out!
I’ve loom knitted a great deal of socks through the years however that is solely my second colourwork and the primary time making my very own pixelated sample. I’d forgotten how a lot enjoyable colourwork is!! These simply flew off my loom, and I’m happy with the brief floats inside, too.
I used the Knitting Board sock loom (fine gauge) at 56 pegs, and Mothy and the Squid’s merino sock yarns in “Midnight Black” and “Ruby”. It’s solely knit stitches proper up till the two×2 rib on the ankle.
As is my go-to of late, I love to do the Kitchener cast-on, knit the toe, then do 75-80 rows knit for the foot (I did 80 for these then took it down a smidge to 75 for the purple pair under), then the heel utilizing the Eye of Partridge method to get some further texture (helps to stop the heels carrying by as quick), at which level I additionally seal up the toe, after which do about 50 rows of a knit design earlier than 5 rows of two×2 rib on the prime. And that’s as near a “sample” as you’ll get for my loom knitting!
This pair took me precisely a month to make (24 Sept to 24 Oct), in and round sewing the Wolfkiller Cloak. I’ve discovered with Long Covid that I typically can’t sit upright for very lengthy, which limits my stitching time, however I’m capable of loom knit whereas mendacity down as long as my head is propped up a bit.
Vampire Lestat socks
After ending the blood drip socks, I used to be tremendous excited to create some “Interview with the Vampire” Season 3 socks utilizing the colors and VL logo from the S3 teaser video. And as an apart, I like this emblem a lot – it really works as a VL (“Vampire Lestat”), as LL (“Lestat de Lioncourt” or “Louis du Lac”), or additionally as a set of interlocking fangs! So easy but so properly finished.
As is common lately, I used the Knitting Board Sock Loom Original (fine gauge) set at 56 pegs.
For this pair I used Glendale Fibres Standard Sock in “Violet” 75% superwash merino / 25% nylon & Mothy & the Squid merino sock yarn in “Midnight Black” 75% merino / 25% nylon.
It was a little bit of a job discovering the proper solid-ish purple color that wasn’t too darkish. I needed one thing mid-toned so the black would distinction nicely and I like that this has only a slight quantity of color variegation!
Am I the one one that buys yarn virtually solely from small dyers on Etsy? I simply seek for one thing like “merino sock yarn” and filter outcomes by “Delivers From: UK”? Although I really first found Mothy & the Squid on Tumblr of all locations, and I like her yarns rather a lot.
I used my cleaned up emblem picture (screenshotted from the teaser video) and the extremely useful cross-stitch sample era website Floss Cross to scale back the emblem to 2 colors and 32×30 and performed with the slider a bit to get one of the best iteration of the emblem.
I’m kinda restricted by the grid dimension on socks (ie I can’t do a 100 row scale like a cross stitcher or sweater knitter might!) and that knitting pixels are basically V-shaped as a substitute of X or sq.. However I’m happy with how these turned out and the emblem is tremendous recognisable as what I meant!
As a substitute of utilizing simply the ball of black yarn and having to anchor and carry the yarn across the plain facet of the sock, I used three completely different mini-bundles of black yarn to minimise the lengthy floats on the VL image. Though I used to be managing 4 bundles of yarn, I discovered the emblem sections to be SUPER enjoyable to knit and these rows simply flew by in a single session every.
I’m proud I remembered to put the emblem on reverse sides so it’s worn on the surface of the ankles as a substitute of 1 inside and one outdoors!
These are completely the quickest pair of socks I’ve ever knitted – the second sock was solely 4 days from begin to end (thanks, stress knitting) which is further spectacular contemplating I didn’t have any lengthy drives to knit in. This tells you extra about my well being that something, tbh – a lot of knitting = a lot of mendacity in mattress time (I’m presently combating off so many opportunistic infections on prime of the present Lengthy Covid).
In complete, this pair took me solely 16 days from casting on to blocking, which is astonishing to me!!
I’ve nonetheless acquired a good bit left of each purple and black yarn so it received’t be the final you’ll see of those! In truth, I’ve simply began a brand new pair of socks utilizing these yarns and the “Escher Bat” sample from my Alterna Knits book…
