Whale Socks
September 9, 2025
Project recap
- Ravelry: PurringYarn’s Whale Socks
- Time spent: 32 hours
- Yarn:
- MC: West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4 ply (873 Seascape)
- CC: The Knitting Loft Boots (Ivory)
- Needle: US 2.5/3mm
- Duration: -
- Pattern: Self-design
- Designer: me
Pattern planning
The inspiration of this pattern is to use my remaining blue striping yarn from WYS to knit a second pair of socks. Originally I was planning to knit Easy Peasy Socks by Karolina Adamczyk in inverted colour scheme, contrasting of Winterwonderland socks, but after few inches I decided to frog it, because the colourwork doesn’t go well with the yarn in my opinion. I’m pretty tired of searching for patterns at this point, so I decided to design my own.
The MC is self-striping blue. My instinct is to have a sea theme and the idea of whale quickly comes to my mind - I’ve seen a yoke sweater pattern with whale before. Thanks to Excel and VBA, I was able to draw colourwork fairly quickly.
Figure 1: Left: 1st version; Right: 2nd version
It took me two attempt to get what I wanted. I was not happy with the first version because of few issues and I fixed them in my second attempt. Here are my thoughts when I’m redesigning:
- The colourwork on leg looks like it’s being cutting off. I cannot simply remove the motif, otherwise it would lower the position of whale. The current positioning looks like it’s surfacing on the sea and I strongly prefer to remain this way, so I have to make some adjustment to the upper part of the colourwork by filling some mountains.
- For the 1st version I was using Sweet Tomato Heel. While it is easy enough to knit and remember, it didn’t suite with this self-striping yarn. I think Sweet Tomato Heel would be a great option for a contrast heel though. For this pattern, I’ll use the traditional heel flap.
Journaling and drawing
While knitting this pair, I also started incorporating my another hobby: drawing! It looks so cool and refreshing when combing two hobbies together: definitely an example of 1 + 1 > 2! I tried watercolour first but I’m not very skilled at the material so I used my iPad to draw it digitally instead. When I finished the project, I went back to watercolour and this time was better, as the thumbnail photo shows.
Project timeline
- – Pattern design.
- – Attempt on 1st version.
- – Redesign colourwork and start 2nd version.
- – Bind off and block.