The second shipment of this year’s sock club was all about spring: beautiful flowers, tea-party treats, and light stitches to put a spring in your step. Dream in Color created a sweet lavender shade called Violet Hour on their Everlasting Sock yarn for us.

Tulip

The Tulip socks have a simple lace pattern that evoke the broad delicate leaves of tulips.

Pirouette

The Pirouette socks feature swirling panels that twine up the leg over a rib background.

These patterns are exclusive to the Cookie A 2013 Sock Club until April 15, 2014.

The sock patterns from the April 2012 Cookie A Sock Club, Nanaimo and Turbulence, are now available for purchase! Inspired by the seashore, these two patterns reflect two opposing aspects of coastal life: simplicity and calm, versus the brewing current underneath the sea. Nanaimo and Turbulence are knit in Socktopus Sokkusu Original, a fine yarn with a great twist that really shows off  fancy stitch patterning.

The Nanaimo socks are simple and cozy, with the left and right socks mirroring one another. The knit and purl pattern is nice and calming and perfect for gift knitting for men and women who don’t like too much fuss.

$6.50 

The Turbulence socks are also mirrored and have lots of fancy stitchwork and patterning that somehow comes together in an orderly fashion. Twisted stitches, yarnovers, strange pass over eyelets, cables, you name it—many of the knitting creatures from under the sea are represented here. The stitches in the Turbulence socks intertwine and wrap around each other, creating a sort of order out of chaos.

$6.50

The 2013 Cookie A Sock Club kicked off the new year with two new sock patterns, Ernie and Newton, knit in Indigodragonfly MCN Sock (as well as two delicious cookie recipes for fig bars and pecan sandies!) I’m enjoying seeing everyone’s finished socks and cookies in the Ravelry group.

Newton  features a broad lace leaf motif down the front and back, separated by cables down the sides.

Ernie features a vertical leaf and rib pattern.

These patterns are exclusive to the Cookie A Sock Club until February 15, 2014.

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

Flight and Striation are the final patterns from the 2012 Cookie A Sock Club.

Flight features a not-too-complicated airy feather motif.

Striation’s geometric lace pattern is mirrored from left to right.

The yarn is Sinful Sock from Stricken Smitten, a luxurious cashmere blend in a deep, rich violet that proved nearly impossible to photograph accurately – but was so lovely to work with!

These patterns are exclusive to the Cookie A Sock Club until December 15, 2013.

The final patterns from the 2011 Sock Club, Rambutan and Dragon Crystal, are now available.

The Rambutan socks are a play on texture with an eyelet welted pattern that swirls around the foot. Because of the heavy twist of the pattern, the two socks are mirrored in opposite directions.

The Dragon Crystal socks are highly three-dimensional and have large swathes of smooth fabric within the stitch pattern itself.

These were originally knit up in Sanguine Gryphon Bugga!, which you can now find at either Cephalopod Yarns or The Verdant Gryphon. With 20% cashmere these are a real treat for your toes!

Of course, if you’re looking to get in on the sock club fun, there are a few memberships still available. I’d love to have you join us!