I wasn’t happy with the biggest change Peter Jackson’s team made with The Desolation of Smaug. I mean, a fabricated love interest for Legolas? What was world coming to? But that was before the movie came out.

Along the journey, there were other deviations that weren’t included in the book: Dol Guldur, the White Council, even Radagast for goodness sake. But Tauriel was going to be slightly harder to let slide. I was ready to loathe her; to tell my friends that she was terrible; to refrain from buying the Special Extended version just because of her presence in the film. But to my surprise, the opposite happened.

Tauriel is inspired by the eponymous elf and architecture in Thranduil’s palace. Depending on how you look at the intricacy of the twisted travelling stitch pattern, the socks could be soft and rounded, or hard and angular; just like Tauriel. The gusset stitches and toe feature a twisted stitch ribbing that adds to the downward flow of these socks. They are best knit in a solid or semi-solid color, so that any crazy color patterning doesn’t have a jarring effect on your fabric.

Tauriel was first published in the Winter 2014 issue of Knitty.

Pattern Update -- 1/07/14: The Heel Flap reads:
Row 2 WS: Sl1, p6, k2, k7, k12, 4, p7, k2, p7, turn.

It should read:
Row 2 WS: Sl1, p6, k2, p7, k12, 4, p7, k2, p7, turn.