Finestre Socks

Hi everyone,

It has been a while since I last posted. Life has been, well, challenging over the last two months. So much so that I’ve had to take a break from everything but the absolute essentials. I’m hoping to get back on track with more regular blog posts now!

I wanted to introduce a design that was released last week in a Knit Picks sock collection. Here are the Finestre Socks!

This collection, Rockin’ Socks, features stripes and mosaic colorwork. This was a first for me: I’ve never tried mosaic knitting before! Not only that, it is my second ever sock design!

For those of you new to mosaic, like me, it is a knitting technique that creates colorwork motifs using slip stitches. Only one color is used at a time in each round, and the second colorway is slipped from the previous round to create the two-color motif. It takes some getting used to, but it’s fun and not difficult once you get the hang of it! One thing to keep in mind is that you will need to knit approximately double the amount of rounds you would with stranded knitting. I do really love that you can create knit-and-purl texture throughout, and I decided to play with this texture in my Finestre Socks.

Finestre means “windows” in Italian, and indeed, I wanted to create little window frames with my black sock yarn against a light hand-dyed contrast color. I divided up the mosaic blocks with stripes of light contrast, to break up the monotony of the pattern. I also stuck with stockinette stripes on the sole, because the textured mosaic would not be so much fun to step on. I think the socks turned out really well!

For these socks, I decided to combine a solid and a hand dyed to create an interesting color contrast. Searching through my stash, I found a really beautiful hand dyed sock yarn which I purchased from a friend a number of years ago. She dyed the yarn using natural materials: mushrooms she harvested in the Norwegian forest, and boiled black beans. The two dye materials create a beautiful blue and peach variegation, which contrasts nicely with the solid black sock yarn.

The final design was knitted in Knit Picks Hawthorne, using a speckle yarn of a similar colorway to my hand dyed, paired with a kettle dyed deep grey purple.

The Finestre Sock design offers three sock sizes and an array of possible color combinations. Have a look on my Ravelry page, or hop over to Knit Picks and purchase the entire collection!

This coming week, I plan to release my Napatree Tee design, just in time for the warm weather! Keep an eye out for a new post!