Cable Sock Pattern: Barbara Socks

Cabled socks are some of the coziest socks, don’t you think? Every winter, I feel driven to design new cable sock patterns and this year was no exception!

I designed and knit these cabled socks as a Christmas gift for my partner’s mom. I’m calling this new sock pattern Barbara Socks after her. 😊

Purple cable socks

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Stitch Pattern

The Barbara Socks pattern has a pair of wide, mirrored cables down the front of the leg and the top of the foot.

Two mirrored cables on the top of purple cable socks

The back of the leg is made up of a simple ribbed pattern. This makes them a little bit faster to knit than if there were cables all around. It also makes them easier to get on and off your foot because a ribbed back is stretchier than all-around cables.

The same purple cable sock, but from the side. A wide ribbed pattern on the back of the leg is visible, along with a heel flap and gusset.

The heel flap continues the ribbed pattern, adding slipped stitches for strength. I particularly like this heel flap pattern and may reuse it in another design soon!

Yarn

The Yarn I Used

Like I mentioned in my post about my Smush brioche hat pattern and in my post about my favorite knits of 2020, I love souvenir yarn. I love to visit local yarn stores in the places I visit. It brings me a special kind of joy to work with the yarn I have bought on vacation.

Especially when I can’t travel due to a global pandemic!

I decided to design this cable sock pattern with a beautiful skein of hand-dyed tweed yarn I bought during a visit to New York City for my birthday in 2019. I used a fingering weight tweed yarn from Chelsea Yarns that, unfortunately, has been discontinued. The line was called Chelsea Luxe Rustic Fingering. It contained 85% wool and 15% nylon, which is a perfect blend for sock yarn that will hold up well to wear.

The colorway I used was called Lilac Bloom. 💜

The Yarn I Recommend

You can use just about any fingering weight sock yarn to knit these cabled socks—just make sure you have about 400 yards / 100 grams of it. One of my favorite sock yarn dyers is Invictus Yarns if you are looking for something hand-dyed and luxurious.

For something on the more affordable end, I think Knit Picks Stroll is one of the best budget-friendly sock yarns. You will need two skeins for this sock pattern if you go with Stroll, since it comes in 50-gram skeins. They even have Stroll Tweed if you like the look of the tweedy bits in the yarn I used!

Where to Purchase

Barbara Socks is available on my website and in my Ravelry shop.

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