All About the Glow Socks Pattern

Socks have always been one of my favourite things to knit. When I first learnt to knit I was very interested in learning to knit socks; the first project I knitted after my initial basic scarf projects was actually a pair of socks. They weren’t amazing and the second sock ended up looking a lot neater than the first, but I was proud of myself for managing to knit them at all. Since then I’ve knitted several more pairs of socks, and I always tend to have an ongoing sock project on my needles. I’m sure it’s not surprising to hear that I’ve had a lot of sock design ideas over the years, however even though I’ve been designing my own knitting patterns for a few years now I’ve never actually written a sock pattern. I think there was always something I found intimidating about designing sock patterns, but since the design for the Glow Socks had been on my mind for years, I decided it was time to finally bring this idea to life.

The first step of this project was to do some research. I’ve got a great collection of knitting books I like to consult when I’m designing, and I took the time to go through these and read every scrap of information I could find about designing socks. I took a lot of notes and put together a plan for the design I’d envisioned. Whilst I’ve obviously knitted lots of socks, I wanted to be sure I fully understood the pros and cons of different design choices, as well as how the maths works for each aspect.

Once I was happy with my plan it was time to start swatching. The first swatch I knitted was a large stockinette gauge swatch, this was very important as it was going to be the basis for most of the pattern’s maths. Once this swatch was blocked and I’d measured my gauge I was ready to start drafting the pattern. I’d decided on quite a large range of sizes as I wanted to cover all the foot circumferences listed in the Craft Yarn Council’s men’s and women’s shoe size charts, plus I wanted to ensure my pattern included sizes for anyone whose measurements fell between these standard sizes. Including all these sizes did make the early stages of drafting the pattern quite tricky. I had to play around with the numbers a lot to decide on things like how many stitches wide the colourwork chart should be to work for all sizes. At times I worried that the design I’d envisioned wouldn’t be possible, or that I’d have to change my plans to a more limited size range, but I eventually got everything figured out.

Now that I’d decided how wide the chart would need to be, I could begin designing the colourwork portion of the sock. I had a rough image of what I wanted for the colourwork in my mind, but ended up with a few similar chart ideas I wanted to try. I knitted swatches for each of these before I decided on one and made some final adjustments to the chart. I then knitted one more swatch to ensure I was happy with the finished chart before I started knitting the socks.

A lot of the design process for these socks involved knitting a section and then unravelling it to make adjustments to the pattern and try again. I’d initially had a pretty clear idea of things like what stitch pattern I wanted to use for the heel flap, but sometimes once I’d actually knitted a section I’d decide something else would work better. Although it can seem frustrating to have to unravel your knitting and can feel like you’ve wasted your time, I found it can actually be quite satisfying. Every time I unravelled a portion and knitted it again I’d be happier with how the sock was looking, so by the end of the project there was nothing I was unsure about or would want to consider changing.

The yarn I used for this project was a sock set from Beehive Yarns, which included a 100 gram skein of the colour ‘Grenadine’ and a 20 gram skein of the colour ‘Pretty Vacant’. I purchased this sock set back when I’d first started thinking about this design, which when I checked my order confirmation turned out to be way back in July 2021! I really liked these colours together and thought the neon pink would be perfect for the colourwork portion of the sock. I’d originally intended to just knit one pair of sample socks for this pattern, but after I’d finished knitting them I decided I’d also like to knit a pair in more strongly contrasting colours. I wanted show how the socks would look with a less harmonious colour palette to help knitters decide what colour combination they’d like best for their projects. I’ve only knitted socks for myself before, but decided to knit the second sample pair for my husband as this would be a good opportunity to test out knitting one of the other sizes. I’d recently purchased some of Yarnsmith’s Merino Sock yarn for a different project and was impressed with the quality of the yarn for the price (I purchased it on sale for £5.50 per 100 gram skein), so thought it would be a good budget option for this project and asked my husband to choose which colours he’d like. He chose ‘Fjord Blue’ as the main colour and ‘Platinum’ for the contrast colour.

I really enjoyed knitting these socks, it’s a pretty straightforward and easy to follow pattern. The socks are knitted from the cuff down, so once you’ve completed the colourwork portion you’re largely just knitting simple stockinette, which I always enjoy as a break from other more complex projects I’m working on. I can see myself knitting more of these socks in the future and I think it’s a great project to use indie-dyed sock sets for.

Click the link below to check out the full details of the pattern.