Satuday Review: Knitting Socks With Handpainted Yarn

Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarn edited by Carol J. Sulcoski

As soon as I heard of this book it caught my eye. At the time I had been going through different sock patterns tired of finding great patterns that were terrible for multi-colored yarn. It seemed as if the only pattern made for a truly variegated yarn was the Jaywalker, and you can only make that one so many times before going stark raving mad. This book of 21 sock patterns by 17 designers offers quite a few ways of dealing with multicolored yarns.

The pattern selection is great, going from simple and short like the Zigzag lace anklets by Pam Grushkin to a complicated intarsia construction like the Spread Spectrum socks by Kristi Schueler.

There is also 18 pages of instruction in the front, covering everything from needle sizes to color theory and 7 pages of knitting instructions and tips which are always great when a book has more complicated patterns in it. (We’re not supposed to remember the correct way to do everything, now are we?)

There is also a clever way of sorting the patterns, putting different icons for “Nearly Solid,” “Muted Multi,”  and “Wild Multi” I do have to say that I wish “Nearly Solid” wasn’t an option in this book though. I can go to any other pattern book for socks that work with that type of yarn. Also, the icons themselves were hard to tell the difference between. They were blue circles with swirls, either white, medium blue or light blue. It is not easy to tell the difference between medium blue and light blue and if you’re going by icons, there is a lot of flipping back and forth to see which is the darker blue swirl.

I also have to congratulate the designers and especially the editor on the choice of sock yarns.  There was a great selection and some of it was from the not-so big companies. It’s another great way to see knit samples of the same yarns that I love to window shop.

<- I especially loved the “Marie Antionette” colorway from Black Bunny Fibers– point of interest; Carol Sulcoski, the editor is also the owner of Black Bunny Fibers.

All in all the book has a lot to recommend it, and a collection of really talented

My rating: A great concept and some very good designs, but not all of them were really made for handpainted yarn, and the icon classification system is hard to figure out.

Tags: black bunny fibers, book reivew, handpainted, Knitting, knitting socks with handpainted yarn, socks