More Sock Stuff - for the Frugal Sock Knitter!

Have you ever knit a pair of socks and been left with a ton of leftover yarn? I have, for sure, and here's a post about a recent experience I had using up that yarn.

I have been off the sock bandwagon for some time, but after coming across the yarn Indulgence by KFI, I have jumped right back on. The socks are nothing fancy (just my regular toe-up sock pattern), and as I've said before I'm not in love with the colorways of this yarn, but it is a dream to knit. Soft soft soft!!

Anyway, as I vowed, I made my second pair of socks fraternal twins:

It was a little difficult to make myself NOT wind off the yarn to make them match, but I did it! I was a little sad when I finished these because I was done and I wasn't knitting with that yummy yarn anymore. But then I looked at how much I had left from each ball, and I had a revelation!

What if I knit another pair with the leftover yarn?? Here's the thing I've found with most commercial sock yarn - I always have a lot left over. And I have big feet!

So here's what you need:

A "food" scale (ha ha - seriously, all I ever weigh on this scale is fiber and yarn), a ball winder (or your own two hands), the yarn, a toe-up sock pattern, and your noggin.

I weighed one of my finished socks. It weighed 35 grams. I weighed the leftover yarn from one of the socks. It weighed 35 grams. I weighed the leftover yarn from the other socks. It weighed 35 grams. Hallelujah! So I knew I had enough leftover yarn to make two 35 gram socks. I put the leftover yarn from one sock on the scale and wound off yarn onto the ball winder until the scale read 17.5 grams. I did the same thing with the other leftover yarn.

So I was left with four 17.5 gram balls of yarn - two each from the leftover yarn from each sock. Are you still with me? So now I was ready to cast on. Here's how far I got with one of the little balls of leftover yarn:

I got all the way up the foot and beyond the turned heel! Phew. I felt comfortable knitting with the leftover yarn because I was knitting these socks toe-up. I'll make the leg as long as the leftover yarn allows me - just knit till it runs out. If I were coming cuff-down, I wouldn't know how long to make the leg and still have enough yarn to finish the foot down to the toe.


Done and done! Frankenstein socks!!

Now I know that someone is out there thinking, "If she had enough leftover yarn to knit one sock, why did she split it into two balls? Why not just make a third sock from each yarn?" Good question, person out there! The answer is that I wanted to make a third pair of unique socks. Also I wanted to try out my fancy-pants calculating and stuff. Now I just happened to have enough leftover from two similar yarns to make a whole pair of socks, but you could use this method to use up odds and ends of sock yarn from many socks.