Use Up Leftover Sock Yarn by Knitting Shortie Socks

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As you might imagine, I have a giant bin of leftover sock yarn in pretty much every color of the rainbow.  For a while I was working on a Beekeeper’s Quilt to use up my leftover sock yarn but knitting hexipuffs got old after a while and then I discovered a much better way to use up leftover sock yarn: use it to knit more socks!! (Brilliant idea, right?)

How do you knit a whole pair of socks out of leftover bits of yarn? Well, first, you need to embrace color by pairing up miscellaneous bits of yarn to make it stretch into enough yardage for a new pair. Also, choosing to knit up shortie socks helps a lot!  I’m really into Summer Lee’s designs for colorful shortie socks.  Here’s a pair of Little Boxes socks that I just finished up. (That link takes you to my pattern review + a few tips related to this pattern).

Little Boxes is a really fun pattern to get started with, but she has a lot of fun ones like the Monogram Socks and the Imber Socks set.

Remember that stranded colorwork designs like these don’t have a ton of stretch to them, so you’ll need to be mindful of the size you select and your gauge.  Also, on the socks above I substituted a FLK heel instead of the recommended afterthought heel.  I think I like the look of the afterthought heel a little better, but the FLK heel was nice because I was able to try the sock on as I worked to make sure I was getting the right fit.

My final tip for knitting these shortie socks is to invest in a food scale so you can weigh how much yarn you have to knit with so you know if you will have enough.  (In the socks above, I used 93 yards of the dark green and about 70 yards each of the light green and gold colors).  I recommend assessing your stash and looking for the colors you have the most of and use that for your first pair of these.  Weigh the yarn before you start knitting and then weigh what you have left at the end and you’ll get a good sense of how many yards you’ll need to knit the next pair.

As usual, here are the details for the socks in this post.

yarn details

Knit Picks Stroll in Forest Heather and Treasure and Stroll Tonal in Cucumber
Fingering Weight
75% Merino, 25% Nylon
Machine Washable / Tumble Dry Low
Stroll Solids/Heathers come in 50 g/ 231 yd balls and the Tonal comes in 100 g / 462 yd skeins

project details

pattern: “Little Boxes” by Summer Lee (available to purchase on etsy or via Ravelry)
size knit: CO 68
needles: US size 2 (2.75 mm), nickel-plated fixed circulars (magic loop!)
yarn used: 92.4 yards (20 grams) of the Forest Heather and 69.3 yards (15 grams) of the Treasure and Cucumber
finished size: 8.75” from tip of toe to back of heel; heel is about 2” tall and the pattern area above it is 1”. The cuff is 1/2 inch (five rounds). Foot circumference is ~7”
duration: May – July, 2022

notes

I goofed reading the pattern on these and I knitted the boxes at five rows tall instead of six.  Oops!

Also, next time I will aim to make the section above the heel and below the cuff 1.5 inches instead of 1 inch.  I think it would improve the fit.