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The Story:
As a designer, my favorite part of this book is the first 55 pages, in which she teaches us how to design socks. She describes the basic sock outline, giving various options for the cuff, heel, and toe. She shows different ways of placing stitch patterns using beautiful illustrations and explains stitch patterns for solid and multi-colored yarns. She explains how to read and understand charts, how to make charts for flat knitting work for knitting in the round, how to create your own stitch patterns in cables and lace, and what to look for in a swatch.
In the other half of Sock Innovation, Cookie demonstrates what she has taught us with 15 exquisite patterns for men and women, worked in a wide range of skill levels. Her patterns are very well written and easy to understand—yes, even the most complicated ones follow a basic structure that is used throughout most of the patterns in the book.
Cookie has named the socks after her loved ones, and each has a little story about why the sock was named for that person. The pair named after her brother, Rick, are one of my favorites (of which it was very hard to pick just a few!). They look like they’d be a blast to make, and I love that the left and right socks mirror each other, so they’re not identical—perfect for those of us who don’t like knitting the same thing twice. The Sunshine socks are charming, relatively simple, and incorporate a beautiful cable and lace rib pattern. Kai-Mei is another of my favorites. It’s the last pattern in the book, but it’s certainly not the least interesting. A traveling lace panel wraps around the outside of the foot from heel to toe. Like Rick, and a few other patterns in this book, the left and right socks are mirror images of each other in Kai-Mei also.
I’ve never really been one to design socks, but this book inspired to come up with something using what I had learned—thus the Petal Socks. Sock Innovation provides endless possibilities—a great book for knitters, designers, and anyone aspiring to create their own pair of beautiful socks.
The Yarns:
Summer Sox
40% cotton, 40% superwash merino, 20% nylon
CEY Summer Sox is a blend of 40% cotton, 40% superwash merino, and 20% nylon. Summer Sock’s slight heathered effect is the result of the way that the different fibers absorb dye. The yarn’s cotton component allows it to breathe and feel cool against the skin. Wool adds elasticity and absorbency. A bit of nylon makes the yarn stable and sturdy. Socks worked in Summer Sox are pretty, comfortable, long wearing, and easy to care for--they can be machine washed and tumbled dried. Summer Sox comes in twelve stripey colorways and eight semi-solid shades, including 5581 Seagrass, the color in Cookie’s Summer Socks.
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more photos
The Pattern:
Here is the free downloadable Cookie A's Summer Sox Socks pattern.
If you have difficulty downloading or printing the PDF pattern above, try these:
page 1, page 2
The Stitches:
Cookie A’s socks are worked in a lace pattern that begins and ends as a multiple of 12 stitches. However, the stitch count per repeat changes over the middle rounds of the pattern. This means that the number of stitches on one row will differ from the number on another.
To avoid confusion when you’re counting stitches, note the number of stitches per repeat for the round you’re working on and multiply it by five—the number of repeats in the round. At the end of the round, that’s the number of stitches that should be on your needles. The number of stitches per repeat is given for each round in the written instructions for the stitch pattern. And be sure to begin and end on the rows noted in the pattern.
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