I released my Enduring Hearts sock pattern on Thursday, hoping this would give anyone who wanted heart-themed socks for Valentine’s Day some time to make them. It was a huge learning experience and I am incredibly grateful for the generosity of my test knitters!
The sock features a panel of hearts, created with a simple knit and purl pattern. The hearts are framed by twisted stitch “cables” knitted without a cable needle as I enjoy knitting socks on the go and don't want to fuss with a needle when I grab a quick moment to knit. The purpose of this pattern was to direct my love to the special yarn, Gather by A Verb for Keeping Warm. As I mentioned in my last post, Gather is the product of local California wool and Arizona alpaca, milled sustainably in Arizona, scoured with rain water and available in natural tones as well as hand-dyed colorways.
The above sample was knitted by me in the Fig colorway of Gather, which is sourced from the madder plant. A Verb for Keeping Warm has dyed up plenty of Fig in time for the pattern release. Also, my test-knitter FrenchieCanuk made a lovely sample in the Smoke colorway, which is one of the undyed colors of the yarn and would be a good choice if you knit the socks for a man:
When you knit with this grey, you know it directly reflects the coat colors of the sheep in Lani’s Bare Ranch flock, combined with the colors of the Alpacas herded by Mystic Pines. It is a remarkably pretty grey color for a natural yarn shade. I am currently also knitting a sample in the Lighthouse colorway of Gather, as I think it will show off the pattern stitches very well:
Perhaps I would never have written a knitting pattern if I didn’t like the Gather yarn so much. But then I did, and since I felt the pattern had merit, I wanted to make it accessible to people so I decided to bring in the Manos del Uruguay sock yarn Alegria. I know that everyone does not have my interest in California fiber and might want to knit the Enduring Hearts socks with something easily purchased from their LYS or with yarn from stash. Here is a sample in the Celery colorway of Alegria, knitted by my test knitter, Valbou:
Manos del Uruguay is a remarkable, woman-owned cooperative that I will write more about later. But for those of us who have oodles of sock yarn in our stashes, any fingering weight fiber that gets 30sts to 4”/10cm on a US size #1.5 needle (2.5mm) will work for this pattern. I have not gotten bored of knitting this yet, because the twisted stitches and heart motif make it kind of entertaining to go on to the next round.
test knit by Valbou
Next step: I must knit a pair for my husband in time for Valentine’s Day! Wish me luck!