FO: Watermelon Socks

This project was the case of well-placed advertising. Facebook spied on me and showed me an ad for Premier Yarns Fruits fingering weight yarn, and I just had to have some. No stores local to me sold it, so I wound up ordering some from Walmart.com of all places. I settled on the watermelon and the dragon fruit colorways as they were the most obvious what fruit they were trying to represent. The only drawback is that this is totally acrylic yarn, but for the design and the price I was willing to give it a try.

When the yarn arrived, I decided to work up the watermelon first and I went with my tried and true - the Smooth Operator Socks by Susan B. Anderson. I've made this pattern several times now and it works great for a self striping yarn to show off the design, especially since the heel is done as an afterthought, so you can make sure to line up any stripes to be the same on each sock. Sadly, this type of heel never photographs as well, but it fits very comfortably so that's what really matters.

I'm very pleased with how I got both socks to match. The trick is just to make a note of exactly how far into each color you start your cast on and make sure the second starts the same as the first (i.e. make your slip knot 4.5 inches before the first black spot). Once I started actually writing down the measurement from a certain color change in the yarn, I've been able to get them to match ever since. 

This yarn impressed the heck out of anyone who saw me knitting with it, which is ironic because this was the simplest sock pattern ever. People who don't knit don't know about self-striping yarn being dyed this way, and I always find the reactions hilarious. I remember having to explain the dying process to several curious onlookers. I find that self-striping yarn is a great motivator to keep going in the knitting - I would think "I'll just knit until the next section of color" or "Let me get through the green and white stripes, they're small". This wasn't necessary since these socks are just stockinette stitch, so there was no counting involved whatsoever to where I would need to stop at a certain spot to remember my place in the pattern, but it did help me to get these done faster because I was always pushing to just the next section when I would work on them.

The yarn has worked out just fine for me even considering it's acrylic. I stick to the idea that most socks are made of cotton or wool for a reason, and acrylic can be sweaty in the more aired-out of places on your body, so I was worried about sweaty feet in these. I tend to only wear my hand knit socks on much colder days (for Florida) and with my tall boots, and I'm happy to report these did not make my feet sweaty, but it was also cold enough to probably not really sweat anyway. I would not wear these in warmer weather, but then I wouldn't wear wool ones in warmer weather either. Anyway, the yarn is soft and smooth on my feet, so it gets a thumbs up from me.

All in all, I love how these socks turned out. They were a mindlessly easy knit but packed a big punch with the fantastic yarn design. What more can you really ask for in a pair of socks?

 

Summary:

Yarn: 1.53 skeins of Premier Yarn Fruits in Watermelon colorway - $11.67

Pattern: Smooth Operator Socks by Susan B Anderson

Time: 2.5 months