Flat Feet!

I bought a couple of (what? Can’t call them skeins. Can’t call them blanks, because they’ve already been painted. Sheets?) Flat Feet from Conjoined Creations at Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.

This is flat #1 (term used at their website). I was curious to see how the random colors will work out, and the purple makes me happy.

Flat Feet is a take off of Nancy‘s idea of knitting sock yarn into fabric on a knitting machine, then dyeing the fabric. You then unravel the yarn and start knitting right off of the fabric.

Flat Feet is divided into 2 separate sections by a few rows of knitted lace weight yarn (acrylic? polyester? nylon? Whatever it is, it doesn’t take dye the same way as the sock yarn). There’s a row or 2 of the lace weight yarn on both ends as well. That’s her cutting line.

Each section is 15″ long and about 11-12″ wide. I’m not sure how much yardage that actually comes out to. I was able to knit the foot out of 5.5″. I have a US size 5.5/6 foot (8.75″/22cm big toe to heel). I should have enough to make a pair of regular socks and perhaps a pair of tennis socks out of each flat.

The knitting is a bit different. The resulting fabric, as you are knitting it, is sort of like handling seersucker fabric. There is definitely texture there. The instructions says that it will all block out after the wash, and I have no reason not to believe this to be true.

Unfortunately, it’s a bit to figure out your proper gauge with this yarn, due to the nature of the crinkles. The instructions that came with the flat suggested US #3, but there was no way that would work for me. I’m using US #0 (2.0 mm). My guess is that the resulting spi is 7.5 because the sock is over 64 stitches, just like this pair of socks.

I leave you with a photo of the socks in progress. You can see the shadows cast by the texture in the fabric in this picture.