Schoppel Crazy Zauberball
Recently I was chatting with an old friend about sock yarn. She knits a lot of socks, and she wears a lot of socks, and she’s been making them for a while. I asked her about which yarns she uses over and over, which socks she likes the best, and which socks have lasted the longest. The point in the Venn diagramm where beauty, quality and longevity met was one of my all-time favourite sock yarns, Schoppel Crazy Zauberball.
Schoppel Crazy Zauberball a 2ply marled sock yarn that knits up in an ombre gradient. The stripes in it are never narrow and the shifts are never jarring, but things are always changing, which keeps things fun when you’re knitting (especially if you’re just working on a pair of vanilla socks). It isn’t a new kid on the scene, but maturity comes with benefits, including a broad palette and lots of colours to choose from.
You may have already extrapolated that Schoppel Crazy Zauberball washes and wears extremely well. To prove it, I asked my friend to bring some of her socks by for a little photoshoot. All of the socks above are OVER TEN YEARS OLD, none have holes or thinning from wear, and they have definitely been worn. She doesn’t do any special laundering acrobatics, (she says she washes them on a cold water cycle with detergent and a cup of white vinegar, and then hangs them to dry). They were a little bit pilly, but not badly so, and it wasn’t anything that couldn’t be cleaned up lickety-split with a disposable razor. (I gave them a little steam to get them photo-ready, but they didn’t need anything more than a little shvitz to bring them fully to life).
My grandmother once told me she knitted my grandfather a pair of argyle socks, and he wore a hole in them while walking to work the next day – it still makes me cringe, these are the stories knitters tell around campfires. I don’t know about you, but if I’m spending 20 to 30 hours making a pair of socks, I want them to have looooooongevity.
Schoppel Crazy Zauberball
Schoppel Crazy Zauberball embodies everything we want in a sock yarn – beauty and longevity! It’s a marvelous, self-striping yarn with a long colourway. The yarn is made from 2 plies, each a different colour, which creates a marled effect as well.
When it comes to sock yarns the Germans do them best – they always bring the besst quality products to market. Schoppel Crazy Zauberball is soft but also a very hard wearing yarn with 25% nylon, so your socks should wear well and last a long time (depending on wear and washing, we have clients who have had theirs well over a decade and they’re still going strong). We believe that if you’re going to put 20 to 30 hours of love and labour into a pair of socks then it’s worth it to make them with a yarn that’s going to last!
We really like the Magic Zauberball Stripe Socks free pattern (picture to the left) and the Sock Head Hat free pattern for this yarn.
- 75% Superwash Virgin Wool, 25% Nylon
- 100g/420m (460yds)
- Fingering Weight Sock yarn
- 2mm to 3mm/US 0 to 3 needles
- Made in Germany
- Machine wash cold, lay flat to dry
- Pattern ideas for this yarn
