When I buy the gorgeous Opal ranges for the Knitting Squirrel’s Yarn Shop, sometimes, in the bottom of the box there is a sample sock. Usually, I glance at the sample sock and set it aside for later. Today, when the new Gallery and Best Friends Opal ranges arrived, there was a sock in the bottom of the box, machine knit using one of my favourite colours in the Gallery sock yarn range – Blue Whale in the Red Sea – isn’t this a cool name for a gorgeous colour combination? I’ve always felt there was enough yarn in the sample sock to make it worthwhile unravelling the sock and rejuvenating the yarn for using in a new project.
So today, later... finally arrived for the sample socks in these vibrant yarns: Gallery – Blue Whale in Red Sea, Play – Chase, and Beachcombing – Driftwood.
The first thing I did was to weigh the socks – they were all approximately 46 grams. The perfect amount for a pair of fingerless mitts or if I use 50 grams of a solid or semi-solid coloured yarn I could knit a really cute pair of striped socks.
So I set about unravelling the socks. On turning the sock inside out, I could see that there was a seam across the top of the toe joining it to the instep. So I carefully snipped along this edge on the instep. Then I snipped the rest of the toe off following the same round of knitting.
I decided to unravel each sock and wind it into a ball using my ball winder. I held the yarn coming from the sock under slight tension and wound the sock yarn onto the ball winder. It seemed the easiest way to keep control of the very crimped yarn. I really didn’t want to have a tangled mess of yarn as the crimped fibre turned into knots very easily.
A while later I had three balls of yarn each weighing about 44 grams. Then I unravelled the toe (you never know when you will need a little bit of extra sock yarn) and had three little 2.5 gram balls of sock yarn. Aren’t the little curly colourful scraps really sweet?
The edge of the socks had been knit using a neat tubular cast on and about 5 cm of the top of the rib had elastic added to give the cuff section of the sock more stretch. This is something I never do with my own socks so it was interesting unravelling it. The elastic added extra stretchiness to the top of the sock.
Next, I held the ball of crimped yarn and wound it onto my swift to make a skein. The sock yarn in the photo is from the Opal Play Sock Yarn range in colour 8825 Chase.
I tied the skein in three places with figure of eight ties to stop the yarn tangling when it is soaked in the warm water. I also wound the two loose ends around the skein and tied the two ends together so that they wouldn’t tangle.
When the tied skein was taken off the swift it was really cute. I just wouldn’t like to be knitting something with it in this state!
Neil said it reminded him of Crystal Tipps hair, from Crystal Tipps and Alistair, a cartoon we loved when we were kids. I can really see what he means!
I filled a basin with warm water and added a tiny amount of synthrapol to it. Then I soaked the skeins in the water. The kinks disappeared very quickly, leaving lovely smooth skeins of sock yarn.
I took the skeins out of the basin, gently pressed the water out of the yarn and laid them outside on the table to air dry for a while. Then I brought them in and hung them over the clothes rack.
Once they have completely dried, I’ll wind each one back into a ball. I really love my swift and ball winder. Don’t know what I’d do without them.
I enjoyed unravelling these socks but this process could be used for rejuvenating any yarn that you want to reuse from a finished project that you intend to frog. It really helps to remove the crimped effect in the yarn before knitting with it. I’m planning what to knit with these lovely sock yarns.
Who wouldn’t want to save these gorgeous yarns to knit into a really cute garment to wear! What have you unravelled recently?
This post may be from a bit ago but it’s just what I needed. I like to buy yarn as souvenirs from trips and have a beautiful skein I want to reuse. This blog entry certainly will help me with the frogging and washing. Thank you 🙂
Love knitting socks! I an currently in the foot portion of the second sock (top dawn) and have just noticed not one but two mistakes in the leg about 3cms above the heel. Not happy but I don’t want to unravel back up past the heel. I will finish the sock as is but wondered if there is any reason why I could’t unravel from the top down to the problem areas then knit back “ up” the leg and ribbing. Thoughts please.
Hi Susan, you may have more luck than I did, but I have to admit, when I have tried unravelling a cast on edge it hasn’t been all that successful for me. I’ve always ended up with tangles but I’m not the most patient person in the world. I often hand tangled yarn nests to my husband, he is really good at unravelling them! The problem is mainly to do with the direction of knitting, I think. (If anyone else knows how to do it, please do tell us!)
What I would do, if it was essential to remedy the mistakes, would be to put the stitches a couple of rows below the mistakes onto needles, then I’d snip the yarn and carefully take the leg off. That way you can unravel back up the leg. You’d then have three options, firstly, you could knit down the leg and then graft the two parts of the sock together which would be quite fiddly. Secondly, you could knit up the leg from the stitches that are on the needles. You’ll find that the switch over from knitting down the sock to knitting up the sock would have a slight jog on the stitches. Also the top edge would be different as you’d have a cast off edge on this sock at the cuff rather than a cast on edge. Thirdly, use a little bit of left over yarn from the ball and duplicate stitch over the mistake to hide it.
But, Susan, I’d treat a little mistake as part of the learning curve. Socks get lots of wear, and if you can live with the little mistake, I doubt anyone will notice it. When you reach you foot out, to show how nice they look to a friend, show them the sock without the little mistake! When I used to make patchwork quilts I’d read about some of the early quilters who’d choose to make a small “mistake”. Happy sock knitting, Nicolette
Thank you, I will be unraveling one pair of holey socks and attempting to use the yarn to Swiss darn another pair that is wearing thin.
Good idea! Helps to fix the sock before it actually has a hole!
Great idea! I have taken apart thrift store sweaters and made shawls from them in the past. I may unravel my first knitted pair of socks that are to big for me and give it another go.
I love unravelling knits – so satisfying!
Penny
x
Definitely… and you can reuse the yarn for something better.
I love reusing the yarn to knit something else.