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Make them festive with bright greens for St. Patrick’s Day, or go with a softer palette suitable for spring and beyond. Either way, the Shamrockin’ Socks will definitely put a little spring in your step!

Gather your minis or scraps and knit each section in a different color, or use the same contrast color throughout. These socks mirror each other, and feature a larger shamrock under the heel for a fun little surprise.

Two tutorial videos are linked in the notes. These videos show how to knit a colorwork sock inside-out, and how to do the Ladderback Jacquard technique. Used together, both of these techniques will help you achieve a stretchy colorwork sock.

Two files are included with this pattern: The main file with the pattern and all of the charts, and a second file that just contains larger versions of all the charts.

Sizes: S (M, L) to fit foot circumferences 7 (8, 9)” or about 18 (20, 23) cm

Yarn:
MC: 463 yds (423m) or about 100g of fingering weight yarn
CC: 5-7 mini skeins or leftovers of fingering weight yarn consisting of about 46.3 yds (42.3m) per 10g mini. You can also choose to use one color throughout.

Needles: US size 1 / 2.25mm

Notions: Stitch markers, tapestry needle

Gauge: 36 stitches and 42 rows to 4” (10cm) worked in stranded colorwork, unblocked.

I give gauge unblocked, as it’s more realistic to check your gauge on socks as you knit. Also, while blocking makes them look nice, realistically they need to fit your feet without relying on blocking. The socks will naturally block on your feet.

Tester #1 (size M with 6 CC sections) used: 53g MC, approx 5g each CC (or about 31 CC total) for the pair
Tester #2 (size S with 5 CC sections) used: 24g MC and 11g CC for ONE sock
Tester #3 (size M with 5 CC sections) used: 23g MC and 9g CC for ONE sock

Musings: I like to give a few actual yarn usage stats on my pattern page, as an indication of real-life yarn usage, especially for socks that can use multiple CCs. In my above examples, I am Tester #1 for this particular pattern. While yarn type has something to do with this, even with subtracting 5g from my total CC usage for the extra CC section, I used more CC than what my testers used, even after accounting for one sock vs two. I knit my socks both inside-out and using Ladderback Jacquard (LBJ), and I have very stretchy colorwork socks. Perhaps I add more ladders in my LBJ than my testers do - I do not know. But it follows that the more yarn you end up using, the more stretch your socks will have.