Osborn Fiber Studio

You know about Shark Week? Well I haven’t ever watched it, but I am borrowing the mnemonic at least to declare Sock Yarn Week! In which we talk about sock yarn and sock related issues. I have a bunch of new sock yarns to share with you, and a discussion or two to have related to sock yarn and the dyeing and purchasing thereof.

January at the OFS PA HQ has been a frenzy of dye experimentation, sock yarn being the palette of choice. I’ll devote a whole day to each new color, but today you get a blitzkrieg of glory as some existing colorways got a fresh lot. These are all in limited quantities – only 4 of each skein, to be precise – so get ’em while they’re hot. For the time being, you can purchase them here only – and that’s because you’re my guinea pigs.

I set up a little paypal store, just to try out the system for this week, and I expect it to be endlessly glitchy, so bear with me. All sock yarn is 22$ per skein. Shipping should be 4.95 for up to 3 skeins, 10.95 for any more than that. (As far as I can tell, the shipping estimator does not work yet.) Since I sell most of our yarn through word of mouth, I’ve set up a “store pickup” option that will not charge you for shipping – only use this if you know you will run into me at school, church, whatever, or if you already know where I live and are willing to come get it.

Edited to add: all OFS sock yarn is 4.4 oz., 480 yards, fingering weight, 8 st./in in stockinette on US 1s or 2s. They are 90% merino, 10% nylon.

Okay enough administrative stuff – on to the yarn!

Behind door #1: Black Bean Blue. Superwash Sock soaks up the maximum saturation of succulent sky sapphires for a spectacular semisolid. Long color repeats (see pre-reskeined pic below) make for alternating rows of light and dark on an average woman’s sock.

Behind Door #2: Baby Boy Peter, redesigned to have very short color repeats that should make for a much more blended final product. Dyed with black beans and black walnuts.

And finally, behind door #3, Pokeberry Blend. I am really pleased with brightness of both the red and the fuscia in this batch; I think I’ve got this one truly repeatable. Medium-length color repeats mean that this beauty will spiral nicely up the leg of an average woman’s sock.