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These socks have been knitted in Cumbria Sock Yarn . This sock/Fingering/4ply weight yarn is a blend of British alpaca, Blue Faced Leicester wool and nylon. We used the natural, undyed yarn alongside the Pink colourway. This pattern uses traditional Fair Isle motifs and is worked from the cuff down with unusual gusset increases and a short-row heel. The pattern was published by Vogue Knitting and can be found here on Ravelry.
This pattern has two complementary socks as the lacy patterns are reversed on the second sock. This is a straight forward pattern with the lace instructions charted and written out. The socks are knitted top down with a standard heel turn and Kitchener stitch to graft the toe together. To buy the pattern from the designer on Ravelry, click here.
I used about 50g of Poldale Silk and tipped the cuffs in some oddments of Whitbarrow in Spindleberry and Limey. I wouldn’t recommend using Whitbarrow to knit all of the sock as the fibres are too soft and fine to wear well. You could also use our Merino Twist 4ply, Cumbria sock or Somerset sock yarns.
This yarn is being unveiled at unravel 2019 at the Farnham Maltings next week. This yarn is a blend of 47% British alpaca with 43% Blue Faced Leicester wool blended with 10% nylon.
We buy the Blue Faced Leicester wool from farms around the Yorkshire Dales and Cumbria, so this really is a local yarn. We carefully skirt and grade each fleece at Town End. This wool was then blended with white and coloured British alpaca fleeces which we clean and grade on a wire mesh over an old table tennis table. The fleeces are mainly white but about 15% are black, fawn, brown and grey. The resulting natural oatmeal colour is a great base for the eight dyed shades:Aubergine, Turquoise, Pink, Olive, Mustard, Midnight, Grey and Rust.
After scouring (washing), carding, combing with the nylon and dyeing, all in West Yorkshire, the fibre was finally spun. We have plied and hanked a small amount for hand-knitters – the rest is being knitted into socks for Arbon Socks…..
Blue Faced Leicester sheep wool
White alpaca fleece
This No-Nylon UK wool and alpaca sock yarn is a soft, bouncy blend of 90% Blue Faced Leicester wool and 10% alpaca. We buy the fine Blue Faced Leicester wool from farms around Cumbria and the Yorkshire Dales. The alpaca fleece is purchased from breeders in the UK and the fleeces are sorted and blended on our farm in Cumbria. The fleece is scoured in Yorkshire before being spun for us in Cornwall. The yarn is then dyed in small batches on the farm. So, this yarn is 100% grown, spun and dyed in Britain.
I was pretty low on alpaca sock yarns after all the shows I did before Christmas, so I’ve been madly dyeing and washing loads of hanks ready to photograph. Finally the rain has stopped and the sun come out long enough for me to take some shots. The new colours are all loaded on the website now, and here’s a selection for you to see.
We have the latest knitting patterns from Tin Can Knits – a selection from the Max & Bodhi’s Wardrobe collection. Although these patterns are mainly aimed at babies, most are sized through to larger adult sizes as well. I’ve knitted a sample of Playdate, a classic cardigan in our Alpaca with Silk 4ply in Bluebell.