Naalbinding

October 15, 2009 at 9:32 pm | Posted in Fiber Arts | Leave a comment

I have started work on a pair of naalbinding socks. They will be a wedding present for a friend of mine, so I have a very definite deadline. He is a Saxon, so I am using the Coppergate sock, found in York from a tenth century grave, as my model.

The Coppergate sock was made with a fairly fine gauge, using the York stitch. I haven’t tried that stitch before, but the YouTube instructions were extremely helpful and very clear. I was up and running after only a few minutes. I’ve completed about half of one sock so far. It worked up much faster than I thought it would. Partly that’s because my gauge is much heavier than the extant sock. Unfortunately I am saving my handspun wool for a different project, and therefore I am limited to what I can buy in the store, which is fairly thick. I am using 100% wool yarn. I want to felt the sock when I am done, in part because I think it will look a bit nicer and in part because I haven’t felted before and think it will be fun. (I’m incorrigible.)

I haven’t ever made a sock before, not even during my mad knitting phase several years ago, so the construction phase should be interesting. Making a heel is making me a little nervous. I can’t decide if the relatively crude heel construction of early socks should make me more worried or less. Time will tell, I suppose.

Pictures of my half-finished sock will be put up as soon as I can convince my husband to tell me where the camera cord is hiding.