Finished knitting my first pair of kilt hose

[Tobus]

For those not following my thread on learning to knit socks, I figured I'd post this here in the DIY Showroom. Last night I completed my first pair of hand-knit kilt hose.

They are plain self-coloured hose, with the cuffs being done in one vertical block of the traditional Gairloch pattern (which repeats three times around the circumference). This was my first go at this pattern, using it as a warm-up to doing an entire set of socks in the pattern.



I'm using Rowan felted tweed yarn, which is a fairly "hairy" aran-weight yarn. It has flecks of different colours in it, which along with the fuzzy appearance appeals to me for its rustic finished texture.

I planned out the cuffs by scaling the Gairloch pattern to suit my knitting gauge, circumference of my calves, and total desired height of the cuffs. I sketched out the pattern on my computer and used this as my guide whilst knitting. Surprisingly, the finished result actually looks like what I planned!



I didn't necessarily plan it this way, but these kilt hose happen to perfectly match the blues and greens in my Colquhoun kilt (woven in near-Wilson's colours). And the colour of the legs actually match the khaki top band of my kilt. Not only that, but these colours complement the mustardy-gold check stripes in my favourite kilt jacket as well (shown in the background). Win-win!



Aside from being my first set of kilt hose to knit, it was also my first attempt at a project using stranded colourwork. What is stranded colourwork? It just means using multiple colours of yarns simultaneously in the knitting to create a pattern, and the yarn that isn't at the forefront is carried along the backside as a "strand" or "float". Here's a picture of the cuffs turned inside-out, where you can see the floats. The pattern is basically a reverse of what's visible on the outside. Keeping the tension even on the floats takes a bit of attention, but I'm pretty happy with the uniformity and evenness of my floats.