I love the music of Joe Hisaishi, whether it’s piano songs or movie soundtracks. Inspired by his music, these socks incorporate several Japanese lace knitting patterns.

The very first mystery sock I ever designed was for the Solid Socks group on Ravelry. It was inspired by Cimorene, the tough and no-nonsense princess in the Enchanted Forest series of books by Patricia Wrede. Her faithful companion through these books was a dragon named Kazul. I dearly love dragon stories and have always wanted to design a patt...

Inspired by Albrecht Durer’s engraving, Melencolia, this sock blends my love of creativity in art with my other great love: math! It pains me to see the muse in this picture looking so vexed about mathematical and scientific studies. Follow along and see that math can be beautiful!

Join us for a Merry Mitten MKAL! This MKAL will be hosted in the I Make Mittens group on Ravelry during November 2022.

This pattern was inspired by a hilarious line from “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”. Bofur the dwarf, in reference to Smaug the dragon, calls him a “Furnace With Wings”.

My daughter introduced me to Korean TV this year and I’m hooked! The first, and quite possibly best of the shows that I’ve seen so far is “Crash Landing on You”. These socks are inspired by the lead character from that show, Yoon Se-ri.

Short socks for summer time! These socks feature a subtle star pattern across the instep, a contrasting cuff, heel, and toe.

The delicate twisted stitch columns are reminiscent of the heads of grass that has gone to seed. Knit each repeat with a different color of yarn for a scrappy look, or in a single color for elegance.

Knitting lace feels luxurious and elegant. It looks much more complicated than it really is - simple decreases and yarn overs. And what could be more elegant than lacy socks? Delicate and dreamy, knit in a soft color, it feels as if you are walking on clouds.

Knitting lace feels luxurious and elegant. It looks much more complicated than it really is - simple decreases and yarn overs. And what could be more elegant than lacy socks? Delicate and dreamy, knit in a soft color, it feels as if you are walking on clouds.

I love spring! There is much joy to be found in watching flowers slowly bursting forth from the ground or leaves beginning to open up and unfurl on the bare branches of trees. The lace patterns on these socks celebrate the new life found in a spring garden.

These socks are the third in a collection of socks inspired by the March sisters from Little Women. In the beginning of the book, the girls each receive a copy of the book Pilgrim’s Progress from Marmee as a Christmas gift. There follows an incident in the life of each girl that is reflective of something that happens in Pilgrim’s Progress. I c...

These socks are the second in a collection of socks inspired by the March sisters from Little Women. In the beginning of the book, the girls each receive a copy of the book Pilgrim’s Progress from Marmee as a Christmas gift. There follows an incident in the life of each girl that is reflective of something that happens in Pilgrim’s Progress. I ...

Herpetology.

This is the third annual September Mystery Sock KAL with a dragon theme. You can never have enough dragons!

Dragons! Books! I just can’t get enough of either of these things. The socks for the MKAL are inspired by yet more fictional dragons. (See my previous free MKAl pattern, To Dragons With Love for more inspiration). Each part of this KAL is both inspired by dragons, and has reading suggestions included.

Be excellent to each other!

These socks are the first in a collection of socks inspired by the March sisters from Little Women. In the beginning of the book, the girls each receive a copy of the book Pilgrim’s Progress from Marmee as a Christmas gift. There follows an incident in the life of each girl that is reflective of something that happens in Pilgrim’s Progress. I c...

March 2020 has been a pretty crazy time! With millions of people sheltering in place and feeling isolated, it’s time to give back and share some love. As I was knitting this hat, the title to the book “Love in the Time of Cholera” kept running through my head. To be honest, I have never read it, but I couldn’t help adapting the title slightly t...

Sometimes I get seduced by colors of yarn. I saw a package of worsted weight mini-skeins and decided to design a cowl that used up essentially all of the yarn.

When I was little, my mother had a Christmas story book that she had been given as a child. One of my very favorite stories in the book was about poor Granny Glittens. Granny was poor, and made a little money by knitting mittens to sell at Christmas time. She knit all kinds of designs on her mittens and the children loved them. One year, The St...

As a math teacher, I love reading about women working in STEM fields. I love encouraging all of my students, but especially the girls, to work hard and enjoy learning about the world, to think logically and systematically, and to look for patterns and structures. This sock is a tribute to all of the women who have worked hard to learn, teach, a...

Inspired by the leaves of a philodendron plant, this is a lacy, top-down sock.

Dance! Boogie Wonderland!

I knit too many socks, if such a thing is possible, so I have a ridiculous amount of leftover sock yarn. In an effort to use some of it up, I created a simple color work pattern that did a lovely job blending a rainbow of colors together.

Stranger Things! Everyone is talking about it these days. My children encouraged me to design some socks using this show as a theme, and what better way to knit about this show than to have a mystery Knit-along?

I’m a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkien. Huge. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve read the Lord of the Rings, not to mention the Hobbit. My favorite characters, probably because I would be one myself if I lived in Middle Earth, are the hobbits. I love their fierce loyalty to each other, their unquenchable love of fun, good cheer, eating. As G...

This is the sixth and final pattern in a series of socks inspired by one of my favorite games growing up: Clue!

How can you resist a cake of yarn that looks like a cupcake with that pompom on top? I certainly couldn’t, but I just didn’t want to make another hat. If you take four of them and attach the pompoms to each corner, you end up with an adorable baby blanket.

I have a great love for dragons. Dragons in books, dragons in movies, dragons in songs…I would love dragons in real life if I could find one!

One of the books I have thoroughly enjoyed in recent years was “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society”. I have also been enjoying knitting guernsey/gansey style socks. I can take a hint. Pair them together and knit a sock inspired by the book!

I knit a lot of socks.

I decided to design some mitts to go with the Dancing on Flowers Hat. These fingerless mitts use a gradient and a solid yarn; if you knit the hat, too, the smaller size will need only one ball of each color to knit the set. Like the Dancing on Flowers Socks, these would be equally lovely using up leftovers.

One of the books I read more than any other is “The Hobbit”. During my last reading of it, I was struck by the description of Smaug as having a “waistcoat of diamonds”. Inspired by that phrase, I designed these socks.

With four charts per foot, even the most adventurous sock knitter will find these intricate shin sheathes a rollicking knit unlike any other. Each swirl features a different stitch, twining down the leg and foot in an astonishing array of motifs and textures, ensuring a fiber feat unlike any other.

In Greek mythology, the Pleiades were the seven daughters of Atlas. An extremely short version of the story is that after a bunch of stuff happened, Zeus translated the women into stars.

I have a teenager in my house, so pretty much the only movies I go to any more are superhero movies! These socks were inspired by all of the Justice League and Avenger movies that have come out recently.

Here’s a great pattern for using up all of those leftover scraps of sock yarn!

Lavaliere: noun

I may be ridiculously excited about the new Wonder Woman movie that’s coming out this spring. I tried to design my own version of the logo for these socks. Other than the patterning on the leg, this is a basic sock pattern.

This sock pattern takes its inspiration from one of my favorite British TV shows, “Doc Martin”. With quirky characters, beautiful scenery, and engaging story lines, it’s a funny and charming program.

This is a simple color work patterned sock. It would be great for using up leftover sock yarn, which--to be honest--most Crazy Sock Knitters have a lot of! It would also be a fun way to use mini-skein sets.

This is the fifth in a series of socks inspired by one of my favorite games growing up: Clue!

This is a top-down lacy sock with ribbing incorporated into the design to help keep it from sagging down the leg; an interesting pattern without being overly complicated.

This is the second in a series of socks inspired by one of my favorite games growing up: Clue!

This is the first in a series of socks inspired by one of my favorite games growing up: Clue!

I love the Jeeves and Wooster books by P.G. Wodehouse. One of the characters that Bertie often finds himself engaged to is Madeleine Bassett. These socks are a lacy version of my Bertie Wooster’s Faux Pas socks.

My daughter has always loved cats. When she was in kindergarten, she drew them every single day until her teacher told her she needed to try something else!

These mitered fingerless mitts are a different way to make use of self-striping sock yarn. Or use up scraps of fingering weight yarn and make each square different!

This is a companion piece to my “It’s a Doily, Not a Dishcloth!” pattern. I’m constantly amused at the Unexpected Party scene in the movie, The Hobbit. After Bilbo laments about the dwarves using his doily as a dishcloth, he mutters, “Confusticate these dwarves!”

These are fairly simple fingerless mitts with a Bohus-inspired color work cuff and a gusset thumb.

February is a time to start dreaming about spring and summer delights outside in the sun.

Mitered squares are addictive! I was trying to find a way to incorporate them into socks that would take advantage of self-striping yarn.

This is a fun, eye-catching color work sock. With the colors I chose to knit it with, the pattern seems to really pop. Any highly contrasting two yarns should do likewise.

I love the Jeeves and Wooster books by P.G. Wodehouse. In many of the stories, Bertie Wooster has decided that some outrageous article of clothing is the hottest fashion trend and begins to wear it, much to the dismay of the much more tasteful and savvy sensibilities of his valet, Jeeves. In one story, Bertie starts to wear purple socks, and th...

A friend of mine mis-read something that I wrote as “neck sock”. Since I happen to be rather addicted to knitting socks, she challenged me to go ahead and create a neck sock. This is version one.

Emojis! I am inundated with emojis, since I have a teenage daughter. Inspired by her love of technology and cute things, I designed these socks.

This design was inspired by the delightfully goofy Dufflepuds in C.S. Lewis’ book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Quite literally, the sock pictures an island with trees in the sea. Less obvious, unless you like to take off your shoes and put your feet prominently on the coffee table where everyone can admire them, you can see the “hidden” foo...

The color work pattern on these mitts reminded a friend of mine of the ancient video game Pong, but worked in tulip colors, hence the name.

Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia.”

“Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia.”

Stranded color work sock knit in the Bohus style. The sample sock was knit with color-coordinated leftover sock yarns:

This mitt pattern is based on my sock pattern. I was challenged by a friend who loves knitting fingerless mitts to convert some of my sock patterns to items that she would prefer to knit.

This pattern is one of the promotional patterns to help launch the book “Defarge Does Shakespeare”.

This design grew from my love of autumn leaves. The yarn’s color perfectly matches the shade of yellow I see in the changing aspen leaves where I live. The leaves are shaped accurately, and I love how the vine lace pattern up the sides of the arm organically shapes the gauntlets.

This design was inspired by the four young lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The cable pattern is made of four strands that weave in and out of each other, tie into knots, separate, but finally come together into a stylized heart shape.

This mitt pattern is adapted from the Wriggle Socks pattern.

This pattern is the mystery sock design for the Solid Socks group for February/March. More of the pertinent information and pictures will be added once the KAL is over.

These hats were inspired by Hansel and Gretel and the witch’s gingerbread cottage. I wanted to make semi-matching hats for my twin niece and nephew.

Inspired by the “fraternal socks” challenge in Sock Knitter’s Anonymous, this design ended up looking more like sisters than brothers. The pattern is reminiscent of wallpaper, and all I could think of while knitting these socks were the sisters, Maria and Julia Bertram from Jane Austen’s book Mansfield Park. Both of them were happy to sit in th...

Top-down, mosaic-patterned socks.

These socks were loosely inspired by Elizabeth Zimmerman’s “Three-and-One” sweater pattern.

This sock was inspired by the poem by Jenny Josephs:

The long, golden braids and textured panels of these socks reminded me of Rapunzel’s long braids dangling down the sides of her tower.

This is a top down sock pattern with a cable running down the side of the leg. At the ankle, the pattern shifts over to the top of the foot.

Fingerless mitts with a twisted stitch and bead pattern on the cuff. This pattern was inspired by some socks I had previously designed, Queen’s Crown. If you are a fan of toe up socks, you could use the chart for the mitts, as the crown pattern is worked from the “opposite” direction.

Stranded color work socks, designed to use up leftover scraps of sock yarn.

Go Hawks! This hat is for all of the 12th Man fans of Seattle!

This lacy cowl was inspired, in a long-ago and round-about way, by a read-along for the fairy tale “Tam Lin”.

This is a cuff down boot sock with lots of twisted stitches, but an easy to follow pattern.

This pattern is inspired by Bilbo’s line in the recent movie, “The Hobbit”. As Bilbo becomes increasingly frustrated with the dwarves and their mess, he cries out in exasperation, “It’s a doily, not a dishcloth!” Well, now you can make a dishcloth that looks like a doily and have a multi-purpose item.

This pattern is the April/May 2013 Mystery Sock for the Solid Socks group on Ravelry.

This is a sock with a fairly simple color work pattern. The size is easily adjustable for the moderately confident sock knitter. The motif on the heel is worked in intarsia, just enough to get a taste for intarsia knitting.

These socks are my tribute to Maurice Sendak.