In a little over two weeks I get to play with knitters and see wild horses on Chincoteague Island. Carodan Farm hosts their annual SoXperience Retreat there, and I get to teach! I am so excited. Carodan Farm is a farm that’s a wool shop, or a wool shop that’s a farm. I’m not quite sure how they do it all, but I hear lovely things and can’t wait to get there to experience it all with a bunch of knitters willing to learn new things.

From the event name, you get the idea that the focus is on socks. I love that. And I love that I get to teach Vertically Stranded Color Work which works great on socks as well as anything else.  You can read more about the event in this link to their newsletter. Here. Won’t you please consider joining us in Virginia?

This has been on my schedule for a while, but just a couple weeks ago I decided to design a sock just for the event, so students can apply what they learn using a pattern (in case they don’t quite dare to wing it). Students get the pattern free, and afterward I’ll put it up for sale on Ravelry.

It’s a straightforward top-down sock, except for the stranding bits. The photo here is a bit misleading. See the patterning extending down the heel flap? Well, I decided a standard reinforced flap might wear better, so that is how the pattern is written, and it will include a photo of the second sock done this way. Clog wearers can make  modifications if they like the pattern on the heel.

I used Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock Lightweight ‘Every Day Grey’ for the main color, and oddments of two colors of The Plucky Knitter Primo Fingering for the contrasting vertical strands.