Are there buy buttons on the side of the page? If so, you've caught this pattern on one of the handful of days every year when it's available! If not, read on for details of where it went and what to do if you want to be notified the next time it's available.

A few years ago I got overwhelmed by my back catalog, retired most of my earlier work, and launched Tiny Nonsense. That gave me space to make Cool New Stuff! But some people missed the earlier things, so I make many of the retired patterns available for a few days once or twice a year.

• If you see the buy buttons on this page, you’ve caught it on one of the days it’s available! You can buy it just like usual.

• If you don’t see the buy buttons on this page, then it’s not currently available. It will probably be available the week after Thanksgiving and for a few days in June or July.

• If you want to hear when the retired patterns come back, subscribe to the mailing list or patreon, or keep an eye on my instagram.

Louche adjective of questionable taste or morality

Ribbing, stockinette, and the occasional increase or decrease…that’s all that’s going on here. No cables, no lace, no fancy business with extra colors or complicated stitches or anything else that’s going to seem just the tiniest bit overwhelming after a long day. Just ribbing, stockinette, and increases/decreases.

And really, once you have the pattern set up, mostly you just knit your knits and purl your purls and cruise along mellow as can be.

Now, you do get to do a slightly fancy bit of business where you make that band of gorgeous patterning go dashing across your foot. But again, it all happens with just a few carefully placed increases and decreases.

Though given how impressive they look, I absolutely won’t blow your cover if you want to let everyone think they’re hard. It’s good to let folks be impressed with the things you can do!

They’re written in three sizes (56, 64, 72, and 80 stitch cast ons), and you should feel free to adjust your gauge a bit to fine tune the fit of the sock. Just be sure that you’re working at a gauge that gives you a sturdy sock fabric with your chosen yarn!

I recommend working at something around 7, 8, or 9 stitches per inch, and I’ve included a table to help you figure out what gauge you’ll want to use for the size you need. With that range of sizes and gauges, the socks will fit a foot (measured around the ball of the foot) between 6.75 and 12.5 inches (with lots of points in between).

These are perfect for you if:

• You want to do something fun with your next gusset
• You love mirrored socks

They’re not for you if:

• You don’t like charts (the pattern uses charts)
• You hate swatching (you need to swatch to check your needle size)