The first two patterns from the 2012 Cookie A Sock Club, Makoto and Wayward, are now available on Ravelry.
Makoto was inspired by fortune cookies.
While I suspected that fortune cookies are not really Chinese, I had no idea that the origin of the fortune cookie was a source of debate with several people claiming to have invented it. In fact, it was so hotly contested that the San Francisco Court of Historical Review gathered evidence and held a mock trial where they ruled that the fortune cookie was invented by Makoto Hagiwara, a Japanese immigrant living in San Francisco. Even though the fortune cookie has precursors in Japanese culture, they became a mainstay in Chinese-American restaurants.
So all this rambling about fortune cookies, what’s that got to do with socks? Well you see, when I get an idea in my head, my stubborn mind can’t let it go. I wanted to make fortune cookies, and I even recalled a stitch pattern I had seen that resembled the shape of a fortune cookie. A ha! A brilliant thought for the club, thought I. I became obsessed.
The Makoto socks, named after the inventor of the fortune cookie (though the ruling appears to be disputed by a small contingent in Los Angeles), are a little crazy and unconventional just like the original fortune cookies must have been. A lace pattern forms the shapes of tiled fortune cookies spaced with large holes created by double yarnovers. With increasing and decreasing on every round, the pattern forms a bit of biasing which affects the elasticity of the fabric.
 Makoto – $6.50
Wayward features traveling sets of geometric cables over a twisted ribbing background. Sounds complicated, doesn’t it? But it’s not really that tough once you dig in.
The Richness of Martens yarn from Alisha Goes Around is luscious and has great stitch definition, perfect for showing off fancy stitchery. I love twisted stitch cables at least as much as the next sock knitter, so I chose a simple intertwining cable panel, mirrored it, mirrored the pair again, and started knitting without a definite plan in mind. They were to be my wayward socks. The twisted cabled stitches meandered, criss crossed, and wandered as wayward souls do. I kept some notes and kept going, making decisions on the fly, sometimes having to backtrack. Of course I petted the yarn at the end of every round. Mmm, cashmere and silk. I don’t often design this way because I learned early on that knitting without a plan can mean problems later down the road.
The Wayward socks are a fun knit and not that complicated when broken down into pieces, but the charts appear monstrous. There are a lot of them. Don’t let that fool you. You only have to print the charts you need for one size. One of the things I love about electronic patterns is that there’s no limit on size. The Wayward socks, at a whopping 20 pages, is the type of pattern that would never make it in print.
 Wayward – $6.50