Pretty Purple Socks Part Deux

If I'm forced to pick a favorite color, it would be blue, particularly sky blues and scrumptious perwinkle shades. But really, I like most colors. Maybe it's my years of quilting that taught me every color has a place, even the ones that make your eyes water at first glance. My stash of quilt fabric is so extensive that I've had friends call up and ask if they can come 'shop' through it because they need 50 different yellows or sixty reds and they know I've got a better selection than the local quilt shops.

Although I don't mix and match yarns in sweaters quite the way I do with fabric on my quilts, I've still managed to collect a considerable variety of colors. Yellows, greens, blues, oranges, some nice neutrals and a smattering of vivid reds - it's like having a rainbow in the closet. But that variety only comes over a fairly lengthy period of time because I tend to go through color phases. They creep up on me. I'll suddenly realize that I've bought nothing but green yarn for the last month or I'll find myself drooling over a particular shade of cameo pink every time I see it.

I guess I knit in color phases, too and I've apparently just gone through a purple phase because here's yet another pair of pretty purple socks, to go with the purple socks I posted last week.

The yarn is from All Spun Up. It's handspun Blue Faced Liecester and is so deliciously, unbelievably soft that it's like slipping on a pair of hand knit clouds. This is my first experience with handspun but definitely not my last. I've purchased three more skeins of sock yarn from Kristen. Besides being super soft and cushy, I love the way the colors shift gently throughout the sock. With commercial sock yarns, I'm prone to be very matchy-matchy and have been known to pull out half a skein of Opal to find the right place to start the color sequence for matching socks. But with these, I didn't have that urge at all. I like the fact that they match without being exact duplicates.

The technical stuff: Knit on a size 1 Knit Picks Classic, Magic Loop style. 64 stitches around and the pattern is a basic cuff down, heel flap and gusset number with wedge toes. This is my default sock, the one that I can knit in my sleep.

Oh, and even if you're not in the market for some pretty hand spun yarns, you should visit Kristen's Esty shop to look at the very, very pretty lace shawl she made.