Socks From New Zealand Yarn

A friend recently brought me a couple of 50g balls of New Zealand sock yarn from Australia – I decided to make it up into socks straight away.

This variegated pattern, as is all of them, dependent on the number of stitches you’re knitting. I started with 72 stitches and got one pattern for 20 rows; I decreased to 68 stitches and got a second pattern; then I decreased to 64 stitches for the lower leg and the foot which resulted in a third pattern. With a yarn like this, dyed in very short segments, the difference in patterns is very noticeable. In most of the other variegated yarns, the dyed portions are of much longer length so the pattern isn’t disrupted by a change in the number of stitches. What emerges in this yarn at 64 stitches is the lime green spiral with blue patches and short red stripes.

The yarn I began with last evening changes colour every 4 rows so the number of stitches doesn’t make a big difference in how the design knits out.