After a VERY successful triumph in sock knitting thanks to Christine’s Sockalong and her book, I finally conquered my sockaphobia. So I decided to embark on my 2nd sock knitting adventure by knitting a pair of sock for my Mum’s Mother’s Day present. 

 

(Me 2 Months Ago When Faced with the Idea of Knitting Socks)

In all honesty the Amelia colour way from felt Felt Fusion wasn’t my first choice of yarn for my first pair of socks. When browsing through her amazing catalogue of colours I came across the most beautiful yarn that she calls Hattie May.

  
I’m not usually a girly girl and pink would never normally be my choice of colour when choosing a garment, but what I’ve realised on my sock knitting Journey is that I absolutely love girly coloured lacy socks. I’m constantly drawn to pink sock yarn😳. It’s so completely out of my normal comfort zone that even my partner commented on my sudden urge to buy PINK yarn. But look at it, isn’t it beautiful!

So anyway, when shopping for the yarn for my first pair of socks I came across the above yarn. But unfortunately it wasn’t available to buy already dyed and I would have to wait for Shadow (Felt Fusion) to dye it🙈. Now, all of you knitters out there know that when your a women on a knitting mission there’s just no time to waste, even the thought of having to wait a few days for some pre dyed yarn was killing me. So I ordered her Amelia yarn which had already been dyed (still pink, see previous sock post!) and then asked her if she could dye up the Hattie May yarn for me (eep). 

So Hattie May was added to my ever growing stash of sock yarn. I toyed with what colour yarn to go for and what pattern to make for my Mum’s pair of socks for ages but no inspiration was coming to me, so I asked my partner to help. I laid down my stash of sock yarn in front of him and asked ‘Which yarn do you think is most Mum?’ To my dismay he picked out the beautiful pink, grey and cream yarn that is Hattie May😞. If I were to be totally honest with myself I think I knew that it was the perfect yarn for my mum all along, but I just couldn’t bring myself to part with it. Luckily she’s worth it! 

I already had an idea of a pattern I wanted to use for this yarn. It was a pattern that the late Sarah of ‘Yarn and What Not’ had used for a pair of socks that I had seen on her Instagram feed. It’s called Lacy Mock Cable Socks by Kat, it can be found on ravelry for free. The pattern has actually been archived, but if you look on the patterns comments someone has kindly posted the link to the sock patterns PDF. 

And so my Mum’s Mother’s Day socks were born…

  
Aren’t they a thing of beauty! 

I used the magic loop technique with my go to Addi 2.5mm, 80cm circulars. I cast on 64 stitches using the long tail cast on and knitted 2×2 rib in Cream Cascade heritage yarn for 12 rows. I then joined my Hattie May yarn and knitted in the lacy mock cable pattern for approximately 50 rows (10 pattern repeats).  

The pattern itself was lovely to work with. It has a pattern repeat of 5 rows and once you’ve done it a few times it becomes second nature, I rarely had to check back at the pattern. There aren’t any overly complicated stitches. All it consists off are knit and purl stitches on three of the five rows, a yarn over on one row of the repeat and a lifted stitch on the other. It’s so effective, I’ll definitely be using it again. 

I felt ambitious with this knit and I decided to try a contrasting Fish Lip Kiss Heel by Sox Therapist. The pattern for this heel can be bought on Ravelry for about £1 and it amazing, I won’t be using any other heel technique from now on. No more faffing around with heel turning and picking up stitches, all of the techniques are fully explained (with pictures and all) on the patterns PDF. It makes such a strong heel and looks great too. 

  

For the foot I carried on knitting half of the stitches in the lacy mock cable pattern and the other half in plain old stockinette Stitch so they that they would be more comfortable for my mum to wear (can’t imagine having all of that cabling under your feet would be comfy). 

The yarn was amazing to work with, Shadow really is an uber talented lady. The colours work so well together and I was actually a little apprehensive that the cables would get lost within the yarn, but I think the combination works really well. 

So all in all my second sock knitting experience was very successful, and my Mummy  loved her handmade Mother’s Day gift (at least she said she did). 

  

I even have enough yarn to make myself a pair of Rose City Rollers😊.

Thanks,

A. Xx