It’s no secret that I love a good self stripe yarn. But while I have been really good at knitting my way through my leftover solid sock yarns (with my massive garter ripple squish blanket for example), I’ve been less successful at dealing with the nearly 500g leftover striped sock yarn - nearly all of it from the West Yorkshire Spinners Birds collection.

Socks for me or my boys take around 60g yarn (although they are now growing rapidly) but that means that I have an awful lot of significant leftovers of around 40g or so. I always felt that the bold stripes needed their own showcase and that they might overwhelm a mitered square blanket or something similarly large, and so I did what I usually do - shove them into a bag and prevaricate.

But this recent lockdown saw me rootling through my stash in search of inspiration and I suddenly had the idea of knitting these yarns as a mash-up. One colour repeat of one ball alternated with a full colour repeat of another.

I gave my boys the task of pairing yarns - and first up was my youngest son who chose the Bullfinch colourway paired with a Christmas yarn from last year. I did my usual toe-up sock with a fish lips kiss heel for speed and they practically flew off the needles. I had almost forgotten how quickly self stripe yarns can zoom along.

I was so pleased at how they knit up - and they were instantly seized by my son - always a sure sign of a winner. I’m now cruising along with a Blue Tit/Goldfinch combination which is going to be nothing if not colourful! Watch this space - possibly with sunglasses for an update.