Pretty, Patterned, Cotton Socks

Hey everyone, hope you are all getting in lots of creative time. We have been pretty busy here but I have managed to do some crafting here and there. Since I knit my first pair of socks, see here for that post, I have been a bit sock mad. There are just so many amazing patterns out there, many with really beautiful designs. I was itching to try a decorative pair but wasn't too confident in my sock knitting skills.

I did finally pluck up my courage and settled on a free pattern that looked relatively straight forward, link here. The pattern called for 100% cotton yarn, luckily I had a bought a couple of balls of pastel variegated cotton yarn fairly cheap, so I decided to make a start. I went with the medium sized pattern, as I have long but narrow feet. They turned out fairly well, even if I did make a huge number of mistakes along the way, so here they are!

Finished 100% Cotton Hand-Knit Socks, Blocking

At first I tried the k3p3 ribbing for the cuff, but didn't like how it turned out so I changed to the optional ribbing pattern instead. This worked out much better for me and I was happier with how it looked. The next step was the 4 row repeat for the design, here is where things got tricky. I'm not sure how many times I had to rip back and re-do sections because I made a mistake, but it was a lot.

Hand-Knit Socks - 4 row repeating pattern

It was really nice when I got past the heel turn and was only doing the pattern repeats on the instep rather than the whole sock. I kept track of my rows, using a great app called Knit Tink. This meant I knew exactly how many I needed to do for the second sock. Unfortunately I did made a big error when I was closing the second sock. I use kitchener stitch to finish off the toes and I did it in the wrong direction on the second one. You can see the difference in the photos below, the first was done correctly, the second incorrectly.

Correct Kitchener Stitch Close

Awful Kitchener Stitch Close

They both should have a rounded toe, opps. I didn't want to start trying to rip back the closing stitches, so I left it alone. These were fairly challenging to knit, I needed to constantly pay attention to what I was doing, otherwise I ended up making errors in the pattern repeats. However all the stitches are knit or purl, just the order changes to create the design. I'm pretty happy with the result and the mistake in the kitchener stitch doesn't seem to affect how comfortable they are.

I have continued to add so many more amazing sock patterns to my Pinterest boards so I'm sure you will be seeing more on my blog in the future. If you want to keep up with some of the patterns I'm adding to my to-do list, follow along with me on Pinterest. That's all for now guys!