Spring & Socks

Spring has arrived in Oceanside and after a long period of hesitation it has decided to stay a while.

Now comes the period of conflict for us fiber artists. Do I work in the studio or do I work in the garden? It was a lot easier choice when the weather was wet plus frozen wet plus cold.


So much for spring now for the socks part.







Many of our guild members are accomplished spinners and imaginative knitters. They dye, blend, spin and knit one of a kind items. (Some even raise their own source of fibre).
Socks are a wonderful project for long winter evenings. They are practical, portable projects for small batches of hand dyed yarn. They are great fun to create with yarn that has been space-dyed so that there are bands of different colours along the length of the yarn.

They can be carefree. Letting the stripes appear as you knit with no attempt to control where the different colours fall leads to delightful surprises. The surprise unfolds as you knit urging you to keep going. Who cares if the pair don't match. Granny's rules don't apply to "art socks".

They can be downright frivolous.

Add a fringe.

Mix colours.

Add pattern.


On the other hand you can look upon them as a challenge. How do you get matching stipes from one length of yarn that you have space-dyed? Planning ahead seems to be the key.

Now comes the difficult part. With such lovely foot wear why would you ever put on shoes? Sandals are the only choice next to bare feet when you have a pair of "art socks".