Sock Fabric

 I was going to spin the yarn, and knit a fine gansey this summer. 

Then, I realized that the fabric I wanted was actually "sock fabric".  

Thus, when I was out sailing with guys that had gotten many pairs of handknit ski and hiking socks from from me over the years, and I told them that my plans for the summer was to learn to knit socks, they were surprised.  However, there are socks and there are "socks"!

I cabled up some 6-ply, 1,680 worsted yarn, and started looking for needles to knit it. I was not impressed by 2 mm, 1.9 mm, 1.8 mm, 1.5 mm, . . .  . but ahh! the yarn comes alive with 1.3 mm needles. Stitches are easier to  knit and easier to see than with the thicker needles that I had tried.  Actually the 1.3 mm needle got mixed in to a set of 1.5 mm needles Iwas working with, an the difference was such an epiphany, that I frogged the 20,000 stitches that I had already knit with the 1.5 mm needles, and am reknitting it with 1.3 mm needles. (I have not frogged the first sock of the pair, and I may keep it because it is a good sock, just not a great sock. ) 

That yarn, knit with 1.3 mm needles is a lovely fabric, and just as importantly, it is as fast to knit as coarser fabrics knit on thicker needles. The stitches pop and are easy to see, and it is easy to feel when the stitch is correct. And, it is suddenly a smooth fabric, that will not chafe.  It is the same explosion of understanding as when I first knit 1,000 ypp gansey yarn with "gansey needles".  It convinces me that the magic of  gansey knitting is the ratio of the yarn grist to the diameter of the knitting needle. Now, I believe there are other such wonderful convergences between grist and needle size, with spinning factors such as twist per inch also important.

I also think "that magic" only appears when using a knitting sheath.  Now, I am using blunt tipped knitting "pins" or knitting "pricks", which do not work well with a leather knitting pouch.  More and more, I am convinced that knitting tools were rather specialized. A leather knitting pouch with pointy needles is a much better tool kit for lace, Fair Isle, and perhaps Aran sweaters with bobbles.  I no longer use my knitting pouch for socks.  If I needed a pair of lace socks, I would be buckling that  leather knitting pouch around my waist as I read the pattern.  More likely,  I would knit a fine pair of socks and then use the pouch to knit lace cuffs to stitch onto the socks. 

For a fine sock fabric, I want a knitting sheath, and fine needles. 

I do not care how long the needles are - I use whichever knitting sheath that brings the knitting into an ergonomic knitting zone.  The knitting bag now has 3 lengths of fine sock needles in it - and a different knitting sheath for each needle length. If I was a professional - knitting a ship cargos of one kind of sock, I would need only one set of needles and one knitting sheath. My personal knitting would just be done with that one tool kit. I have the 3 tool kits not because I do so much knitting, but because I want to know how those different tool kits work, and I do not have a teacher to ask.

Yes, this summer, I am learning how to knit a sweater of fine sock fabric. It may be blue or white or dyed, but my wife tells me it will not be any of the natural browns in the fiber stash. Oh Well! That frees up those brown fleece to be fine socks.