Begun while we were in Jasper, these were the perfect maple-leaf-colored socks to be knitting during our citizenship ceremony.
They began as this braid from Sweet Georgia Yarns, purchased in March 2020 during my Vancouver trip. The colorway is called “phoenix rising,” and it’s on superwash BFL.
These were my first sock spin this year, and started me officially on this spinning-for-socks experiment. I spun it into these skeins: a fractal (left) and a mixed-up traditional 3-ply, which didn’t in fact look very mixed up. When I finished plying them, I thought the ply looked a little loose. They will be a good point of comparison with the blue geode socks, which are basically the same yarn, but plied to the maximum tolerance of superwash BFL.
The fractal, on top below, does look very mixed up. I believe that why they are so dark is that this braid had three sections of black, and the fractal got two of them.
The traditional 3-ply got less than one repeat of black. The toe of the traditional sock is the bit of yarn where I chain-plied the leftovers from the last bobbin, and you can see that a bunch of the black went there! Whereas on the body of the sock, there’s hardly any. This is a good thing to keep an eye out for when dividing a braid; just pulling the whole thing into two halves does not necessarily split up the color. It’s quite a different colorway with just a little black, and I like it!
If I had it to do again, I would not have done the toe in that chain-plied bit. I don’t love the contrast of the solids with the subtle rest of the sock. It makes the sock just look confused. But I’m going to file that as “not worth redoing.”
Looking at the socks off the foot, it’s a little easier to see what’s going on with the colors in the traditional 3-ply. The color repeats look longer than in the fractal, though the strips were just as short. There’s some lining up, but there’s also lots of deceptively blended place, where the closeness of the colors being mixed makes them appear solid. I love that section in the middle of the foot where the orange grades into red.
They look a bit saggy around the ankles in this picture. I hope that tendency doesn’t persist. They’re quite short already, and I used every bit of yarn!
The socks may be a bit vanilla, but to me, they will always be maple-flavored!
Osborn Fiber Studio 