Pin of the Week: A Simple Stockinette Sock

As you may know I’ve declared this the Summer of Socks if for no other reason than I need to amuse myself. Over at About I’m sharing patterns, books and techniques for knitting better socks, and I recently came across a pin on Pinterest that led me to Susan B. Anderson’s excellent blog post about how she knits stockinette socks.

A plain stockinette sock is as easy as sock knitting gets, and once you’ve done it once it really is easy. But you’ll find yourself coming back to a basic pattern over and over again because you don’t really have to think about what you’re doing, so you can knit them anywhere, and they come together pretty quickly because you’re just knitting round after round.

Stockinette socks are perfect for building your sock wardrobe and for wearing every day. Isn’t that a lovely life goal: to only wear handknit socks? I could get behind that.

In addition to the basic pattern, her recommendations for books and other resources are spot-on, so be sure to read to the end.

[Photo via Susan B. Anderson.]

Over the years I have shared a lot of pumpkin knitting patterns, and I’ve knit and crocheted a lot of pumpkins myself. But it feels like there are always more fun things to try with knit pumpkins, so this year I wanted to look a little more beyond basic stockinette or ribbed pumpkins and share some pumpkin patterns with cables, bobbles and colorwork.

In the cable collection we’ve got these cute little basic cable and ribbed pumpkins from Elly Bear Knits. There are two sizes that make a wide, flat pumpkin and a taller round pumpkin. Both are worked in the round as a tube that’s cinched top and bottom when you’re done, and they use bulky weight yarn.

Another cute cable pumpkin knitting pattern comes from Gray Bear Akswokrat. This one is knit flat and it looks like a chunky yarn but you could use other weights to make pumpkins of different sizes. This one also has an I-cord stem and uses yarn to cinch up the sections of the pumpkin, giving it a more natural look.

Add some bobbles to your pumpkins with this design from Autumn Shelter Makes. Also worked in the round in a tube, it features a repeating pattern of bobbles and uses yarn wrapped around the outside to make segments. This one looks like worsted weight yarn to me.

Of course there’s nothing that says your pumpkin has to be a single color, so let’s throw in some colorwork. I love the look of the Cozy Fall Pumpkin knitting pattern from South Stitch Girls. The little leather loop adds a rustic touch but you could also just add a stick. These pumpkins have five colorwork options and are worked in worsted weight yarn in the round.

There’s also the Autumn Fair Isle Trio pumpkins pattern from Equestriann Style, which has three different sizes of pumpkins with four colorwork designs. They are worked in super bulky yarn in the round and look good with high contrast or more muted color combinations.

Have you read?