Blood drip socks
As you well know, my love of vampires is year-round, but it did work out nicely that this first pair of blood drip socks were ready just in time for Halloween! 🩸🧦🧶 I had the idea for these blood drip socks a few weeks before and I’m so pleased with how they turned out!
I’ve loom knitted loads of socks over the years but this is only my second colourwork and the first time making my own pixelated pattern. I’d forgotten how much fun colourwork is!! These just flew off my loom, and I’m pleased with the short floats inside, too.
I used the Knitting Board sock loom (fine gauge) at 56 pegs, and Mothy and the Squid’s merino sock yarns in “Midnight Black” and “Ruby”. It’s entirely knit stitches right up until the 2×2 rib at the ankle.
As is my go-to of late, I like to do the Kitchener cast-on, knit the toe, then do 75-80 rows knit for the foot (I did 80 for these then took it down a smidge to 75 for the purple pair below), then the heel using the Eye of Partridge technique to get some extra texture (helps to prevent the heels wearing through as fast), at which point I also seal up the toe, and then do about 50 rows of a knit design before 5 rows of 2×2 rib at the top. And that’s as close to a “pattern” as you’ll get for my loom knitting!
This pair took me exactly a month to make (24 Sept to 24 Oct), in and around sewing the Wolfkiller Cloak. I’ve found with Long Covid that I often can’t sit upright for very long, which limits my sewing time, but I’m able to loom knit while lying down so long as my head is propped up a little.
Vampire Lestat socks
After finishing the blood drip socks, I was super excited to create some “Interview with the Vampire” Season 3 socks using the colours and VL logo from the S3 teaser video. And as an aside, I love this logo so much – it works as a VL (“Vampire Lestat”), as LL (“Lestat de Lioncourt” or “Louis du Lac”), or also as a set of interlocking fangs! So simple yet so nicely done.
As is usual these days, I used the Knitting Board Sock Loom Original (fine gauge) set at 56 pegs.
For this pair I used Glendale Fibres Standard Sock in “Violet” 75% superwash merino / 25% nylon & Mothy & the Squid merino sock yarn in “Midnight Black” 75% merino / 25% nylon.
It was a bit of a task finding the perfect solid-ish purple colour that wasn’t too dark. I wanted something mid-toned so the black would contrast well and I love that this has just a slight amount of colour variegation!
Am I the only person who buys yarn almost exclusively from small dyers on Etsy? I just search for something like “merino sock yarn” and filter results by “Delivers From: UK”? Though I actually first discovered Mothy & the Squid on Tumblr of all places, and I like her yarns a lot.
I used my cleaned up logo image (screenshotted from the teaser video) and the incredibly helpful cross-stitch pattern generation site Floss Cross to reduce the logo to two colours and 32×30 and played with the slider a bit to get the best iteration of the logo.
I’m kinda limited by the grid size on socks (ie I can’t do a 100 row scale like a cross stitcher or sweater knitter could!) and that knitting pixels are essentially V-shaped instead of X or square. But I am pleased with how these turned out and the logo is super recognisable as what I intended!
Instead of using just the ball of black yarn and having to anchor and carry the yarn around the plain side of the sock, I used three different mini-bundles of black yarn to minimise the long floats on the VL symbol. Even though I was managing four bundles of yarn, I found the logo sections to be SUPER fun to knit and these rows just flew by in one session each.
I am proud I remembered to place the logo on opposite sides so it’s worn on the outside of the ankles instead of one inside and one outside!
These are absolutely the fastest pair of socks I’ve ever knitted – the second sock was only four days from start to finish (thanks, stress knitting) which is extra impressive considering I didn’t have any long drives to knit in. This tells you more about my health that anything, tbh – lots of knitting = lots of lying in bed time (I’m currently fighting off so many opportunistic infections on top of the existing Long Covid).
In total, this pair took me only 16 days from casting on to blocking, which is astonishing to me!!
I’ve still got a fair bit left of both red and black yarn so it won’t be the last you’ll see of these! In fact, I’ve just started a new pair of socks using these yarns and the “Escher Bat” pattern from my Alterna Knits book…