Socks : Fixing a Felted Cuff - 30 September 2024

Back in June I wrote a post update about the bright yellow socks I knitted and gave to a friend. She put them in the long wash and the orange ribbing cuff shrank. This meant that she couldn’t wear the socks anymore because they were too tight.

_{Before and After}

As I’ve had the socks in my ‘to fix’ pile for a while I thought I’d better tackle them and try to fix them.

The first step I took was to identify where I was going to cut the knitting. I used a recent post where I was trying to lengthen a sock cuff. The principle is the same and luckily I used two bright colours so it was easy to determine where I should make that first cut.

I can only imagine how difficult this process would be had I used the same colour or a very dark colour. I only needed to cut a couple of times and then with the same knitting needle I started pulling each orange stitch out. This was only difficult because that colour had felted because it was 100% vintage wool.

I continued pulling the orange colour stitches and releasing the first row of the yellow stitches slowly but surely.

_{You can see the felted cuff in the background}

The yellow stitches ‘behaved’ well and so I didn’t have to struggle to put the same size needles into each stitch.

I soon had the right number of stitches distributed in the three double pointed needles (dpns) and was ready to continue with the ribbing. This time I used a 2 x 2 rib and used yarn I had available but it wasn’t a solid colour - it was definitely not wool either.