Preparations for the sock talk are going well. I’ve finished all the samples I want to show. There are a few optional ones that I’ll see if I have time for next week.

I’ve been having fun the last couple weeks getting the fibre prepared and yarn spun to make a pair of socks to show at the talk.

Samples of the three fibers blended for the sock yarn:
Left – tussah silk (10%)
Middle – mohair/wool blend (20%)
Right – Blue Faced Leicester wool (70%)

The fibres were naturally dyed with elderberries back in late 2008 / early 2009.

I originally blended the fibre into batts in 2009. The carder I used only made small 1oz batts. It also had very course teeth on it, which wound up shredding some of the fibre, causing a lot of nepps and short pieces.

I re-carded the fibre a few weeks ago. I pulled off as much of the nepps and short pieces as I could. They tended to float their way onto the top of the drum, so picking them off was fairly easy.
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I started out with 250g of fibre and had 190g left after recarding. I made three batts, roughly 63g each. I then stripped each batt into six strips and pulled these through a diz to make the roving you see in the second picture above.

I spun the yarn over a couple weeks. There was still quite a lot of nepps and short pieces in the roving. I picked these out of the roving and off of the yarn as I spun. There was about 22g of waste from things I picked off.

I made a large 3-ply skein and a small chain ply skein from the remaining singles. The singles measured 34 WPI and the plyed yarn measures 17 WPI. The large skein is 417 yards, 138g. The chain ply is 104 yards, 27g. The yarn is much greener then it shows in the picture. It is closer to the picture of the singles above.

I’m now working on knitting the first sock. I plan to finish that for the talk and have the second one on the needles to also show. I’m knitting it on 2.25mm needles and it is working out to 8 stitches and 11 rows to the inch.

I’m making it a toe-up sock with a heel flap and ribbed leg. The sock pictured above is at the point where I’ll start the gusset increases for the heel flap. The sock measures 4 inches wide and 6.25 inches long at this point.

The fabric feels quite nice. It is soft and squishy, and it has some of that crisp dryness that silk gives to yarns. I’m quite pleased at how it is working up.