Last summer we spent a day at the Minnesota State Fair where our first stop was the Creative Activities building. I’m always gobsmacked at the level of craftsmanship and artistry that’s on display. If you can think of a craft, someone in Minnesota is doing prize-winning work.
One entry caught my eye immediately and I drooled all over the display case marveling at it. My photos didn’t work out but I got smart and did some searching on Ravelry. After 10 minutes, I found the entry, found the knitter and her blog.
Here is Shelly Kang’s sock blanket (scroll down, you’ll know it when you see it). It won all kinds of awards at the Fair and rightly so. The yarn in this blanket was donated by knitters from all over who sent their bits and bobs to Shelly for her project.
This project makes you realize how obsessed we knitters can be sometimes. Who would knit an entire blanket out of sock yarn? And then take the obsession another step further by finishing it with applied I-cord all the way around. If you’ve done I-cord, you know what a feat that is in itself. (Get it? Step? Feat? Sock yarn? Oh, never mind.)
Yeah, that would be me and about 300 other knitters according to Ravelry.
I’ve been collecting all my bits and bobs of sock yarn and my knitting group has been more than generous with their partial skeins so I’m getting to play with some pretty yarns.
My version of the sock blanket is 12 blocks wide and I’m guessing it will end up about 30 blocks tall or 4 feet by 6 feet. (click pics for bigger)
Sock Blanket
I’m doing applied I-cord from the wrong side to get rid of the color blips. Getting the I-cord right took a while and I finally settled on a DK weight black yarn with a 4-stitch I-cord. Anything less didn’t provide enough weight to frame the squares properly.
One section
When I started this I was storing everything in a small tote. It then graduated to a larger tote and finally yesterday I brought a big basket out of storage to hold it all.
Look at all them ends!
I’ve organized the yarn into loose color families. Blues, purples, greens, reds, yellows, blacks, and lights. I do spend some time selecting the colors that go next to each other but I’m not obsessing. At first you think the colors will never go together, but they do. This is the closest I’ll ever come to making a piecework quilt.
Since each square only takes about 10 yards of yarn, there’s no time to get bored with working with a particular yarn. And just so you know: this is more obsessive than knitting socks. I can’t ignore it.
Visit Shelly’s blog at Heathen Housewife to view the tutorial (right side bar) on how to make your own sock blanket. Or if you have a few yards of sock yarn left over and want to feed my current obsession while avoiding developing one yourself, let’s talk.
(ETA: The tutorial is in the right side bar, not the left, as I originally said. Duh.)
Wowzers. You, too. I refuse to even consider making a sock blanket. But yours will be lovely.
I’ll try and keep your obsession going. I’ve got another bag of sock yarn left overs to give you. I’ll see you a week from next Tuesday. Love it!!
I don’t know much about knitting, but I can appreciate a thing of beauty and hard work when I see it. This is amazing.