Broken Stripes Socks

I love the colours of these lovely socks. They are comfortable and warm. I love the autumnal colours in the rusty metal. I photographed this sheet of rusty metal a while ago when I was walking on the beach. It had been washed up near the old boathouse. Amazingly rich colours of the rust and the interesting textures and jagged holes in the metal really appealed to me and had me reaching for yarn and needles even though these colours aren’t ones that I usually work with. I love purples and blues and greens so working with russets and golds are slightly outside of my comfort zone. But it is fun doing something different and I enjoy exploring different colour combinations.

I used one 50g ball of Crystal Palace Sausalito 8107 Fall Herbs and one 50g skein of Artesano 4ply Alpaca 8774 Ecuador to knit these socks. These socks would be equally beautiful knit using two solid-coloured Opal or WYS sock yarns. Imagine how glorious they would be combining a Crazy Zauberball with one of the solid-coloured sock yarns.

I liked how the colours reminded me of rusty metal. I’ve used this broken stripe pattern before when knitting sweaters for the Sasha dolls and had intended to use a broken stripe for knitting a pair of socks for some time.

I love the Strong Heel. It is very comfortable to wear. These socks are nice to wear with my Birkenstocks. The Sausalito yarn is great for socks as it has 80% merino wool and 20% nylon in the yarn, but the alpaca isn’t really strong enough for frequent wear on an area like the heel of a sock.

The Broken Stripes Socks would be harder wearing if I had used the Sausalito yarn for the heels and the toes. I knew this when I was knitting the socks. I had fun experimenting with these socks as I wanted to see how the broken stripe would look running down the leg and continuing down the strong heel and the foot. I love how these socks came out. I also adore the feel of the alpaca as it is wonderfully soft to the touch and kind of dreamy to wear!

I’m going to knit the Broken Stripes Socks again in a different colour combination where I use two sock yarns rather than the alpaca. I love the alpaca but because I know they won’t wear very well I find myself reaching for a different pair of socks rather than these in the morning. I hate when one of my socks gets a hole! But then, nothing lasts forever and it always gives me the excuse for knitting a new pair of socks, not that I need an excuse. Knitting socks is one of my favourite things to do.