Sock yarn leftovers

I knit a lot of these! Whoever invented self striping yarn deserves a medal.  Sock yarn is (usually) 95% wool and 5% acrylic. It comes in 4ply or 6ply.  The 4ply is harder wearing. It washes well in a machine and some people even tumble dry their hand knitted socks (I don't tumble mine)

The teenager loves my socks but now he's a size 9 it takes much longer to knit him a pair.

These are my all time favourites.  I think they're about 3 years old now and still going strong.

A pair of adult socks takes about 80g of 4ply yarn (maybe more or maybe less depending on size) and comes in 50g or 100g balls depending on the brand.  So you can be left with a lot of wee balls with just a small amount of yarn.  I never throw out yarn so have a large bag of leftovers.

So I started knitting squares.  I cast on 28 stitches and in basket stitch (K4 P4) created reversible squares.  I stitch them together in 4s to make a larger square and then stitch together the larger squares.

This is the result so far.  When knitty people know you're using up sock yarn they give you their leftovers (knitters hate throwing out yarn!!)  And I've swapped a few as well just to get a variety of colours.  It's very satisfying knitting the wee squares as they can be done very quickly, they're portable so I take them on trains, in waiting rooms etc.  I've learned from past experience to finish off the ends as I'm going along and not wait until the end.  So far I've made around 80 squares and I'd guess the blanket is about 1/4 done.

But the best bit is that it's free to make :-)