Forthwith & Posthaste
I have a small weakness for speckled yarns. And by ‘small weakness for’ I mean ‘complete inability to refrain from buying.’ But, just to make things fun, I also have a hard time actually using all those gorgeous speckled yarns in projects. Because sometimes the lovely speckles I adore so much don’t play nicely with the complicated stitch patterns I tend to want to use.
But I’ve finally figured out the secret to actually using my (possibly alarming) stash of speckled yarns. The secret is (as it so often is) restraint. The secret is that you only get one showy thing per project. So if you’ve got some gorgeous speckles that want to strut their stuff, you have to give them a restrained stitch pattern on which to do it.
In this case that means a lovely long stretch of stockinette up top (speckled yarns really shine on stockinette). But I couldn’t knit a whole project in plain stockinette and retain my will to live, so there’s a rather delightful bit of dramatic swoopy business down at the beginning (speckled yarns will also generally behave themselves over ribbing and nice straight lines, assuming you make the lines long enough that they stand out against the exuberance of the fabric). And of course there’s a pretty crown and thumb, because why even knit hats or mitts if you can’t have those!
And don’t worry, you absolutely can make this with a non-speckled yarn and it will be lovely. But if you happen to have an opinionated yarn you’ve been having trouble finding just the right project for, this might well be it.
Popped
These were first. These were first, way back in 2009, when I absolutely did not know what I was doing. Back when sock patterns tended to come in one size and dictate what sort of needle you should use and assume you knew how to turn a heel and decrease for a toe. Back when I wrote patterns in word processing software and created charts as spreadsheets and took pictures with flash because I didn’t know any better.
And of course I got better with practice, because that’s what people do! And as I improved, I tucked all of those earliest patterns safely away so they couldn’t cause problems for anyone or make me feel bad about what I didn’t know when I started. But oh...oh I kind of missed them. Because the socks themselves were awfully fetching! And it hardly seemed fair to keep them locked away just because I didn’t know what I was doing when I was new.
When I realized I was coming up on the fifteen year anniversary of my first pattern, it seemed like the perfect time to revisit old friends. So here they are again in a brand new iteration. They’re not exactly the same as that original pattern (so if you see a picture of the originals, don’t be alarmed by the differences). Instead they’re what I’d knit now having spent the last fifteen years knitting and writing patterns and answering sock questions.
Now the socks come in lots of sizes and gauges, and the pattern has all sorts of little reminders to help with any potential sticky spots, and it gives you options for keeping that lovely bit of fancy business at the top of your foot or moving it down closer to your toes or even for working the whole foot in the same pattern as the leg. Because those are the sorts of things patterns should do! And now this one does. Here’s to fifteen more years!
Penchant Expansion Pack
There are two things you should know. First, exploring variations on a theme is my happy place. I love to find something fun, then tweak it and tweak it and tweak it, just to see what happens. Second, duplicate stitch is magic. It’s easy (you don’t have to make any judgement calls, you’re just tracing over the existing stitches in the underlying fabric), it’s useful (it’s my very favorite way to mend thin spots in well worn knits or to handle my ends on new projects), and it can be absolutely lovely.
So it seems only fitting to combine these hats (which started with a sweet little rib and then accidentally turned into two different hats because I felt like playing around with different variations) with a duplicate stitch (which gives you nearly endless possibilities for adorning your knits). And when you put them together, you end up with something rather special!
We’ll start with the patterns for both versions of the hat. Then comes a rather extensive primer on duplicate stitch to teach you the basics and walk you through several variations. Then to get you started playing with experiments of your own, we’ll end with six different ways to duplicate stitch on the hats.
So whether you make the hats and leave them plain, make the hats and dress them up, or decide to stitch all over an entirely different project, you’ll find something to experiment with. Because it’s good to have options, and I’m always looking for an excuse to try just one more version of whatever I’m up to!
Delineated
This started because I wanted to draw lines on my knitting. And there are actually a bunch of ways to do that! But one of my very favorite is to hold a floofy yarn alongside a regular yarn and then occasionally set the regular yarn aside and work with just the floofy yarn. When you do that, the stitches made with just the floofy yarn end up being a different color. And if you stack them up, you get a line. And once you’ve got the hang of that, well, there’s no end to what you can do.
Here I went with drawing wibbly wobbly swoopy lines. They’re pretty and easy to memorize, and they make the fabric just the tiniest bit wavy, and I swear I couldn’t love them more if I tried. Combine that with a turned hem, which I maintain is the tidiest way to start a hat, and an adorable little welt, and you end up with something that is astonishingly warm and the perfect mix of tidy and swoopy and really just generally delightful all around.
Plus you get to draw lines on your knitting. Which is apparently enough to keep me amused for hours at a time. And possibly I shouldn’t admit that in public? But I suspect some of you might just share this particular fascination, so maybe if we all pretend that’s perfectly normal we can get away with it!
Xanthophyll
My sock model had a scheduling conflict, and I like to do sock photos on a person. But I'm impatient and wanted to get this out now! So until I can get a second photo shoot scheduled, I'm making the pattern free to anyone on patreon (yes, even the folks on the free tier, you can literally get it for zero dollars). I'll take that down once I get more photos (and don't worry, you'll get the update whenever that happens), but until then, we'll just do it as a little treat over there!
Leaves are magic. They really are. But they’re one of those little everyday bits of magic that we’re surrounded by all the time, so sometimes we sort of stop noticing them. But if you pay attention, you’ll see leaves do all sorts of things. They grow, they change shape, they move around, and, maybe best of all, they change color. Xanthophyll is one of the things that helps with that color change. It’s a yellow pigment that is usually hidden behind the green pigment chlorophyll. For much of the year you can’t see it, but it’s protecting the leaf from the stress that can be caused by sudden bursts of bright sunlight. When the green chlorophyll fades away, the yellow xanthophyll becomes visible again, which is part of why leaves turn yellow in the fall. And I kind of love that. I kind of love the idea of something being there, quietly protecting you in the background, even if you can’t see it. And then when the circumstances are right, and you do get to see it, it’s beautiful! It seems like a lovely way to think about handknit socks. They’re there, quietly protecting you, even though you might not see much of them as you go about your day. But when you do catch sight of them, they’re so lovely they stop you in your tracks. And that feels like a sort of magic too!
Grounding
You know when you knit something, and once it’s finished, you find yourself wondering ‘how in the world did I do that?’ When the finished project looks so orderly and tidy and seamless that it feels like it must have grown on its own, rather than been made through some mechanical process?
Yeah. That’s one of my very favorite things. And slippers are one of the best ways to make it happen. Because really, slippers, more than just about any other piece of knitting, are tiny little engineering marvels. And that’s very much true here.
These start with a double sided cast on at the back of the heel. Then they grow, making room under your foot for your heel as they do, until they’re big enough to wrap around your ankle. Then the sides join up and they zoom on down your foot to your toes. They’re all one piece (so you don’t have to assemble anything at the end, just graft a handful of stitches at your toes), they’re easy to make (especially if you’ve ever knit top down socks), and they look astonishingly tidy when you’re done.
Plus they’re lovely and warm and cozy of course. But really, most slippers are. While these? These are all that and clever too. And that’s a much rarer combination!
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