Okay, here´s a suggestion: Instead of knitting needles, grab a fruit knife and pick up a load of local organic fruit to have compote for the winter like in the good old days. After all, homemade tastes best! What do you mean, fruit is no longer eaten in this form? Aha, too much sugar, I see.
All right, one last try: you spend the summer in the garden, digging in the raised bed, picking tomatoes, entertaining the snails and listening to the grass grow. Naaa? Got you? No?! Still not? Because after you've done your gardening you like to do something to relax, and that's called knitting?! - Why didn't you say so?
I could have saved myself all that introductory blah-blah and got straight to the point: Summer sock yarn. As I do NOT take a break from knitting in the summer, at least not below 40°C in the shade, I started to become interested in sock yarns that would not stick to my hands during the hot season and would be comfortable to wear.
Here is my first discovery: Footprints. What a power mix. I immediately loved the soft, dry feel of the 45% cotton, 35% wool and 13% nylon yarn. And the varied yarn, which has a mouliné effect, is pure knitting fun.
What is Mouliné?
Mouliné is a special type of twisting in which two threads of different colours are twisted together. Classic examples are baker's twine or packing twine in red and white or black and white, which, of course, have no place on knitting needles.
Fortunately, mouliné is also available as a knitting yarn in a variety of qualities. The classic colour combinations are grey with black or green with black. After playing an important role in knitwear fashion in the 1950s and 1960s, mouliné went out of fashion for a long time and was considered old-fashioned and stuffy, perhaps because it had been an important part of traditional costumes for decades. Nothing against traditional costumes, but they were not the hot shit of fashion for a long time, at least until the Oktoberfest became a meeting place for influencers.
For a few years now, mouliné has been making a real comeback beyond the mountain pastures, with completely new interpretations of this traditional yarn. New, colourful variations give it an unprecedentedly fresh look (which, incidentally, has also made packing cords more colourful).
With the summer sock yarn Footprints, they've gone one step further: Each of the two threads twisted together constantly changes colour (!). Seen up close, this is a wonderfully chaotic mix of colours, but when knitted and seen from a distance, it results in a rather calm yet lively stitch pattern, typical of mouliné.
The yarn with a meterage of 400 m per 100 g not only feels pleasant when knitting, but also when worn. It is rather matt, wonderfully soft and no thicker than socks made from classic wool sock yarn.
My initial scepticism about the sock wearing out because of the cotton content was dispelled by my wear test. Have a look at my small report on the test set-up by clicking on the picture with the shoes.
Happy summer knitting! Gotta go, stand-up paddling ...
Happy Knitting!
+++ IMPORTANT NOTE +++
More detailed information about the socks, the yarn and the colours used with the exact colour-numbers can be found in the photo collage behind each picture with a circled
Just click on the picture to get more information.