I knit the My Cup of Tea Socks, a free pattern by Robin Lynn, for Nina’s birthday.

Nina has small feet that are frequently cold, so for her birthday this year, I decided to knit her some cozy, wool socks!

My Cup of Tea Socks are worked top down and in the round on dpns. After knitting several pairs of socks recently, I decided that this is my favourite construction method for socks. I liked how I could now add a lace pattern for visual (and knitting!) interest. The pattern only includes one size (women’s medium), which for a price of zero dollars is fair enough. Because Nina has small feet, I decided to go down a needle size to make sure the socks would fit her. Instead of using the recommended 2.25 mm needles, I used 2.0 mm needles. The instructions recommend adapting the pattern to size up or down based on a 64-stitch cast on and 24-stitch pattern motif. However, it otherwise gives no other sizing instructions.

The lace pattern itself was intuitive enough to memorize easily. Furthermore, the pattern thankfully includes both written and charted lace instructions, based on your preference. I myself prefer following charts! The pattern only includes make 1s, ssks, and k2togs. Unfortunately it gave no recommendations as to which M1s should be M1R or M1L. I ended up arbitrarily assigning M1Ls and M1Rs in the chart. However, I made sure I was consistent throughout the pattern repeats.

Despite having a loose knitting gauge, I tend to grip my knitting needles rather tightly. This has resulted in me snapping bamboo dpns and bending metal circulars before. A few years ago I bought some carbon fibre Karbonz dpns in 2.00 and 2.25 mm sizes. So far I found that they’ve lasted me several projects, with no signs of bending or breaking!

My Cup of Tea Socks includes a heel flap and gussets. I now know enough about sock knitting that this is only one way of turning a heel, but it is already my most-preferred method. The heel flap itself has a slipped stitch pattern for elasticity and strength, as well as visual interest.

I used hand-dyed Socky Talky, a Yarn by the Dye Guys from the Fibre Garden in Jordan. This is a fingering-weight sock yarn with 80% merino and 20% nylon for strength. Despite the merino, I found the yarn slightly rustic. It was not as smooth as the merino yarn that I used for the top-down and bottom-up socks that I recently knit. The skein of yarn is a generous 390 m, and I only used about 75% of that. I definitely have enough yarn leftover to include in some sort of scrappy project.

Tomiko and I each bought a skein of this lovely hand-dyed yarn when we visited Jordan in 2018. It had sat in my stash ever since. I finally started knitting with it on our family trip to Niagara this May, so I knit it close to its birthplace! This colour, a rich tonal pink-purple is called Scottish Heather. The tonal colour gives depth to the finished project without totally obscuring the lace pattern.

Get the free pattern on Ravelry here.

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