Use Sock Yarn for Snuggly Handwoven Scarves
Sock yarn. We love it for so many reasons. First and foremost, you use it to make socks. Soft, squishy, warm socks! We also love it for knitted or crocheted accessories like hats, mittens, and shawls. And who doesn’t love it for a lightweight pullover or cardigan? Greta Cornejo goes into more detail about why we love sock yarn for clothing in her post, Knitting Garments with Sock Yarns.
But what about weaving? Absolutely! That is where we want to put the spotlight in today’s post. There are so many reasons to use sock yarn in your handwoven projects, and with the winter season approaching, you may want to use it for your next scarf, shawl, or stole project.
Considerations When Using Sock Yarn
We already covered many reasons to use knitting yarns for weaving projects in our post: Use Knitting Yarn for Cozy Handwoven Blankets. We talk about how to control tension and understand the characteristics of knitting yarns. Once you know that, with a bit of practice, knitting yarns are just as easy to use as wool weaving yarns. So what makes sock yarn different from what we already covered? Let’s take a look.
The Yarn’s Construction
Sock yarn is made a bit differently from other knitting yarns. You will notice most are four or more strands of yarn. Although it doesn’t look like it, each strand is usually spun tighter, and the strands themselves are also spun (plied) with more twist. This makes the yarn more durable and helps it resist pilling, which makes your finished projects not only last longer, but look better as they age.
The Yarn’s Materials
Wool sock yarn isn’t what it was 50 or 100 years ago. Nowadays, most sock yarns are quite soft, often containing merino, silk, or even cashmere. Many also include nylon. Nylon adds durability, and as long as it makes up less than 25% of the blend, you won’t even notice it’s there.
Not all sock yarns are superwash, though many are. As mentioned in the previous post about weaving blankets with knitting yarns, superwash is both a pro and a con. It is perfect for gift giving because you don’t need to worry about the recipient washing it incorrectly, and it will not shrink. But, if you want to lightly full the fabric or raise a halo, superwash yarns may not be the way you want to go.
The Yarn’s Yardage
The yardage is a dream. Most skeins are between 400-500 yards per 100 g skein. That means only two or three skeins are needed for a basic adult-sized scarf. It also opens the door for those single skeins you may have tucked away or any leftovers you may have. The leftover yardage on sock yarn is more generous than with other knitting yarns. Two mismatched skeins or a handful of scrap sock yarns can create a stunning one-of-a-kind handwoven scarf.
The Yarn’s Thickness
Many wool weaving yarns fall into two camps: worsted weight or thicker for blankets and rugs, or very fine with the intention of sewing with the fabric afterwards. Sock weight yarns sit right in the middle. They make a scarf feel cozy and soft; not too heavy, not too delicate.
Hand-Dyed Bliss
Hand-dyed yarns make for the most unique projects. We don’t see this as often in weaving yarns, which makes using sock yarn an even bigger treat. Each hand-dyed skein brings its own charm to your finished pieces.
Fibre festivals are filled with hand-dyed skeins, usually sock yarns. The variety of colours and combinations you can find is inspiring and endless. And don’t look just for skeins, hand-dyers love to use sock blanks as a way to explore gradients and other techniques that make your projects stand out!
Using Hand-Dyed Sock Yarns in Handwoven Scarves
If you have been to a local yarn shop or fibre festival, you have seen the incredible range of hand-dyed sock yarns. At the School of SweetGeorgia, we talk about hand-dyed colour all the time. Whether in weaving, dyeing, or design courses, colour is always a central focus.
Handwoven Colour
One of the most popular courses in the School of SweetGeorgia is Handwoven Colour, where we explore colour in weaving. We examine concepts such as log cabin, optical mixing, plain weave, and twills. But two lessons in particular have caught the most attention.
A colour gamp looks familiar to most weavers, but this quickly strikes us as somewhat different. Unlike gamps woven with commercial-dyed yarns, this one was woven with hand-dyed sock yarn, SweetGeorgia Tough Love Sock. Although the yarn was dyed with a full immersion technique, producing a more solid effect, the yarn still has subtle variations in colour that make it stand out from standard colour gamps.
The other showstopper from this course is the Faux Ikat scarves. Felicia uses palindrome-dyed skeins, carefully arranging them so the colour shifts in very specific spots to create the effect of custom-dyed warps. These scarves look as though they were dyed specifically for each project, and the best part is, they were all made with hand-dyed sock yarn.
Handpainted Warps
In this dyeing course, Handpainted Warps, Felicia explores how to design and dye a hand-painted warp. She shares tips on working with both cellulose and protein fibres, colour placement, dyeing methods, and weft choices to maximize your results. She also shares what worked and what didn’t, because every experiment is a chance to learn.
The chosen sock yarn is the SweetGeorgia Mohair Silk Sock, which is durable enough for socks, yet luxurious enough to wear around your neck. When you weave with yarns this versatile, you can even knit a pair of semi-matching socks with the leftover yarns.
Weaving Stripes, Plaids & Tartans
We have looked at weaving colour, dyeing colour, and now we shift to designing with colour. In our latest course, Weaving Stripes, Plaids & Tartans, Felicia explores key design principles like balance, contrast, and proportion. She also demonstrates how to sample ideas with yarn windings (or software), and finally, how to create your dream plaid fabric!
Although the original course project was woven with Knoll yarn, we just launched a version using our SweetGeorgia Trifecta Fine sock yarn called the Shoreline Checks scarf. Stunning!
Final Thoughts
Sock yarn is versatile, durable, easy to care for, generous in yardage, and full of colour possibilities. What’s not to love? Whether you weave on a multi-shaft loom or a rigid heddle, sock yarn weaves up beautifully into scarves you can snuggle into all day!
Most (but not all) of the patterns shared in this post are available for purchase through the SweetGeorgia shop. But every pattern shared is included FREE with your School of SweetGeorgia All-Access / Weaving membership.
Plus, with your School of SweetGeorgia membership, you get SweetGeorgia shop discounts, and access to the SweetGeorgia Community, where we host make-alongs like our upcoming Winterful Weave-Along, this year featuring Stripes, Plaids & Tartans. Won’t you join us?
Tabetha Hedrick’s article, Which Sock Yarn You Should Choose?, explains the sock yarns SweetGeorgia has to offer, and how each one shines, allowing you to decide which characteristics you prefer for your handwoven sock yarn projects.
We hope you try sock yarn in your upcoming projects, and share those handwoven scarves with us using the hashtag #sweetgeorgiayarns.
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