Tuesday 12 July 2022

Twisting Pathways Socks

In January 2021, or maybe it was February, certainly in one of the deeper, darker bits of the pandemic, and there was definitely snow on the ground, I got a message out of the blue from Lynne Rowe (The Woolnest), who was in the process of writing a new book about sock knitting and asked if I wanted to contribute a pattern. The timing wasn’t ideal – we were in a period of pandemic-induced home-schooling, and I was really struggling to fit work around the children, but I have followed Lynne for a long time, and as someone who loves books and thrives on deadlines, I found that I couldn’t say no.

The brief was a very specific one: the socks had to be toe-up, cabled and have an afterthought heel. I played around with lots of different ideas: cables large and small, complex and straightforward, before settling on the cable I used in the pattern. I was allowed to choose whatever yarn I wanted for the pattern, so got in contact with Eden Cottage Yarns, whose yarn I had used before for my Seed Head Socks,* and they offered me a skein of Eden Cottage Yarns Tempo in the colourway Misty Woods, a beautiful pale green that really shows off a stitch pattern well.

Skein of Eden Cottage Yarns Tempo in the colourway Misty Woods

This project had quite a tight deadline, which meant I had to work with real focus to get the socks knitted in time. I also had to learn to wrangle the cables in the pattern – there are a few ways to create a three-way cable, and they way you work them does seem to affect the finished look, so I had to make sure I was consistent and that I included instructions that were detailed enough for anyone knitting the pattern to get the finished effect to be just as I had intended. I really wish I had taken a photo of the inside of these socks to show how lovely and flat the cables lie on the wrong side, but that will have to wait until I eventually get the sample back.

Twisting Pathways socks in progress

I called the socks the Twisting Pathways Socks, and love how they turned out. I had just enough time to photograph the socks on blockers before I posted them off to the publisher. Just look at that beautiful stitch pattern!

The finished socks

Want to knit your own Twisting Pathways Socks? The pattern is available now in The Sock Knitting Bible by Lynne Rowe.** The book has also been translated into French, and the Twisting Pathways Socks have made it onto the cover of that edition!

The Sock Knitting Bible

Want to add the pattern to your Ravelry queue? You can find the pattern page here: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/twisting-pathways-socks*

The Twisting Pathways Socks in the book

*Ravelry link. May affect people with photosensitivity, proceed with caution. The Seed Head Socks are also available on PayHip.

**Affiliate link.


 

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