Bluestockings, and real blue socks

Latest sock off the needles - the Elizabeth Montagu sock from the latest pattern club by Kate Davies, the Bluestocking Club. 

Much as I fancied treating myself to some lovely Arbon sock yarn, I really can't afford it this month. And it's not as if I don't have a large amount of sock yarn in the general yarn stash. (In fact, the sock yarn is in its own (small) chest, separate from the boxes upstairs.) So I had a quick stash-dive to see what I could find in the line of blue sock yarn (I can be very literal when I want to be) and found these.

On the left is a skein of the lovely Ripplescrafts sock yarn, in a colourway that I believe was dyed a few years ago in support of the local lifeboat up there in the far North-West of Scotland (I want to go back there so much). Then there's some indigo dyed yarn from Natural Born Dyers, which I probably picked up from them at a show we were both exhibiting at. On the right are two balls of sock yarn which have long since been wound and lost labels, though I remember the top one is indigo-dyed too. It crocked on to my hands as I was knitting it.

So I chose the navy one for the first pattern in the club, one named after Elizabeth Montagu. No point saying anything about her here; Kate has done as excellent job in her relevant blog post. I do love a yarn club where you actually learn something. Knitting is a wonderful and fascinating thing, but far more so if it's related out to other things such as history or material culture.

I used 2.75mm needles - a bit thick for socks normally, but this yarn is on the thicker side of 4ply and still made a dense, cushy fabric. 

And this is how much yarn I had left after both socks had been knitted up to their heels. Not much. I've done this yarn-juggling before.

I actually measured out the remaining yarn using my grandfather's ancient and hand-worn yardstick which just happened to be near at hand. I had 80 yards remaining, so I carefully measured back 40 yards back, broke it off and wound into one ball, then the remaining yarn was wound back to where it was still attached to its sock,

And here we are, two finished socks! I am one pattern repeat short of the sock version of the pattern (and obviously considerably short of the full stocking length, but given the girth of my well-muscled calves, I rarely wear tall socks anyway. 

It's a very handsome sock pattern; can't wait for the rest of the club.