Super Fun Colorwork Socks to Knit

When I knit socks (which sadly I have not done in a while; need to get a new pair on the needles soon!) I generally stick to pretty simple designs and colorwork that isn’t all that detailed.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a fancy sock, I’m also just pretty lazy and I figure a project worked on size 0 or 1 US needles is going to take a long time even without the added work of intricate colorwork, so why make it more complicated?

But there are definitely socks out there I’d be willing to make an exception for, and I think Tangled Bliss by Annette Schleicher may just be one of them.

If you can’t tell from looking, this is decidedly an advanced knitting pattern. There’s brioche for the cuffs, complex looking colorwork done with the ladderback jacquard technique, multiple charts, and colors changing everywhere.

There are links to tutorials for all the special skills in the pattern, but still it would help to have a handle on these concepts before you get started.

The pattern uses three colors of light fingering weight yarn at a whopping 31 stitches per 4 inches/10 cm (that’s 7.75 stitches per inch/2.5 cm).

Would you believe me if I told you that this pattern was designed for a speed knitting contest? Speed would be the last thing on my mind.

But again, I think all the work for these fancy socks would be worth it. I love hoe the colorwork looks like an old tile floor, and think of the bragging rights when you tell people you made them yourself. (Though of course you did; have you ever seen store-bought socks that look anything like this?)

Best of all, this pattern is available for free on Ravelry, so there’s no reason not to give it a try if you’ve got the skills. If you do, I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Annette Schleicher]

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Waves Socks– Free Knitting Pattern
These cozy Waves Socks are a lovely choice if you want a handknit sock pattern with a little texture but nothing too fussy. The gentle scallop stitch creates a soft wave effect, making them pretty enough for gifting but still practical for everyday wearing. They’re worked in light worsted weight yarn, so they knit up a little faster than fine sock yarn socks too.

Ladies Lace Top Socks – Free Knitting Pattern
These Ladies Lace Top Socks are a sweet step up from a basic handknit sock, with a delicate lace cuff that adds just the right amount of pretty. The rest of the sock is worked mainly in stocking stitch, so it’s a nice project for knitters who are ready to try sock shaping without making the whole thing overly complicated. A lovely handmade gift idea, especially if you use a soft 4-ply sock yarn.

When I was looking around for free knitting patterns to share recently, I came across this fun leopard print wrap from Yarnspirations.

This fun bulky wrap gives you tons of practice with instarsia and makes a bold statement while keeping you warm. It’s rated for intermediate knitters and the design is charted but pretty easy to follow. And it’s only 50 rows and worked in bulky yarn, so it wouldn’t even take that long to knit. (You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.)

So what’s the problem? The yarn that the pattern calls for has been discontinued, and it’s not a yarn that a substitute for immediately springs to mind.

The original yarn was Patons Alpaca Blend, a single ply bulky yarn that was a combination of acrylic, superwash wool, nylon and alpaca.

My first thought was Lion Brand Hue + Me, which is an acrylic and wool blend, with two plies instead of a single. It looks like it has the colors you would need to make this fun shawl.

But as I was thinking about it, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to YarnSub if you don’t already know about it. This website is a giant database of yarn that can consider the qualities of the yarn you want to substitute and offer potential substitutions.

It’s not only thinking about yarn weight, like I was, but also fiber content, number of plies, gauge and even the difference in yardage between one ball and another. It even looks at the price and can be filtered by your price range or preferences about fiber content (if, say, you’re sensitive or allergic to wool, for example, or don’t want to you acrylic).

When I plugged in Alpaca Blend, it gave me a lot of different options, though many of them were self-striping or multicolored, which wouldn’t work for this project, and I don’t see a way to filter for solid colors only.

Still, it’s a good tool to give you some ideas you might not know about or might have forgotten about, and it tells you how the new yarn is similar to the old one and how it differs, allowing you to make smarter choices when substituting yarns.

[Photo: Yarnspirations]

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