Woolaballoo Advent Socks (introductory blog post)

Deck the halls with boughs of holly!
Fa-la-la-la-laa-la-laa-laaa-laaaa.
‘Tis the season to knit socks!
Fa-la-la-la-laa-la-laa-laaa-laaaa.

That’s right – it’s the season to knit socks!  And as winter fast approaches, we’d love it if you’d join us in knitting THE holly-est, jolliest socks in all the land!

But there’s a catch.  The pattern is top secret!  A small snippet of the pattern will be revealed each day this December in our Advent KAL.  We’ll be sharing on Facebook, Instagram and the Woolaballoo blog, so there will be lots of places to find the latest piece of the pattern.

If, like us, you have discovered (and treated yourself to) yarn advent calendars, this is the perfect project for your tiny nuggets of joy.  Or, if, like us, you have an ever-growing collections of leftover sock yarns, you can use those up too!  We even have a limited number of kits available.

Use each of your advent yarns as soon as you open them and create a mystery pair of socks.  There’s colour, there’s texture, there are stripes – we just can’t wait to share ours with you properly!  For now, here’s the sneakiest of sneak peeks!

By Christmas Day, you’ll have a beautiful pair of socks that you can wear while you help yourself to Buck’s Fizz and a Terry’s Chocolate Orange for breakfast.  While you prepare the sprouts.  While you unwrap some pressies and belt out the Crimbo tunes!  You get the idea. 

So, now we have your attention, let’s get into some knitty gritty!  

The socks are worked top down.  We’ve included some stitch counts in our pattern, but each stitch pattern repeat is worked in multiples of four.  If you think your socks need to be wider, add stitches in multiples of four.

The pattern makes two different socks because we wanted ours to be as wacky and wonderful as possible.  If that’s not your bag you can make a two the same by repeating days 1-12 and/or 13-24.  You can make an exactly matching pair by using the same colours again or repeat the same sock with different coloured minis.  If you run out of yarn at any point, simply switch to a new colour – that’s the beauty of these socks!

10g minis should be enough for one pair of socks.  If you have 20g minis you should have more than enough to make 2 whole pairs of socks and then some.  Simply do what feels right to you!

You’ll need 2.5mm needles.  Use either:

• 80cm (32in) circular needles for magic loop method, or,
• DPNs, or,
• Circular sock needles.

Knit the socks in whichever way you like to knit socks!

We’ll use various abbreviations throughout the pattern, but because we’ll be sharing it in stages, we thought it would be useful to put all of them together for you to refer to.

• K – knit
• P – purl
• TSK – twin stitch knit
• TSP – twin stitch purl
• TS – a completed twin stitch
• TBL – through the back of the loop
• YO – yarn over needle
• K2tog – knit two together
• SSK – slip knit-wise, slip knit-wise, knit the two slipped stitches together
• Rep – repeat
• BOR – beginning of round
• PM – place marker
• SM – slip marker

Let’s get a teensy bit more technical for a second.  We’ll be using a short row method to do the heel, which may be new to some of you.  Don’t worry – we would never include any methods that would scare you off!  Besides, there are loads of things to LOVE about this method.  First of all, it is sooooo much quicker than the standard heel flap, gusset, instep method of knitting a heel.  In fact, there is no heel flap, gusset, or instep, which also means there’s no picking up stitches or obsessive counting.  In case you’re not completely sold yet, the whole heel can be knitted at once across half of your stitches.  And once the heel is complete, you have the same stitch count as what you started with – so you don’t have to do any decreases to get yourself set back up for the foot.  Oh, AND you don’t get any funny holes – it’s very neat, especially after blocking.

The instructions for the heel seem long but trust us – you’ll have the hang of it in no time!  It will all make much more sense once you are knitting your heel, but, just in case, we’re going to put together a comprehensive blog post for you, which will also include links to video tutorials!  And of course, we will be on hand to help with any questions you might have too!

We are so excited!  We hope you are too and that you’ll join us in making the happiest socks you ever did see!  Please share your progress with us on Facebook and Instagram and tag us at #woolaballoo – we will love seeing all the different colours and yarn combinations.  Each of us will end up with a unique pair of socks, which only adds to our excitement.

Sing it with us now!

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas… Seasons bleatings from Vicki and Lucy!