Sloping Hills Socks
Cue the music! The orchestra swells, the vocalist takes a breath … “The hills are …”
Sloping.
That’s what they are. They slope up and they slope down. Some are harder, steeper slopes than others but they are always worth the effort. There’s nothing like the sense of achievement when you get to the top – and nothing like the sense of relief when you get back down to the bottom!
I used to do a lot more hill walking than I do now. Many years ago when I was a teenager, I spent a long weekend hiking around Ullswater in the Lake District as part of my Duke of Edinburgh’s award and I walked an awful lot of sloping hills that weekend, probably the most I have ever done in a short space of time! However, despite the rain, the heavy rucksacks, the unappetising astronaut-style meal packs (this was the 1980s!) and those sometimes apparently endless sloping hills, I had the best time and I am so very proud of my gold badge.
I didn’t knit socks at the time that I did my DofE hike (or rather, I had knitted a pair of socks before and vowed never to do it again; the story is here) so I will have just worn layers of pairs of bought socks in my boots. Although now you can buy thinner “technical” walking socks, at the time hiking socks were thick woolly machine-knitted socks that you wore over a thinner pair, but they usually had a seam across the toes which could get quite uncomfortable. Nowadays, I wouldn’t dream of going walking in anything but my hand knits, and that includes walking the dog every day, even though his hill-walking days are past. Hand knit boot socks are knitted to fit, they’re knitted with wool which keeps feet both warm and cool (and there are options for people who can’t wear wool), they’re thicker and cosier than bought technical socks and most importantly, they are completely seam-free.
Whether you’re heading for the mountains or just out around the block with your woof, you need a good pair of socks in your boots so let me introduce …
the Sloping Hills Socks!
Knitted in cosy DK (8ply) yarn, these socks are a quick knit and have the addition of purl stitches to create texture and interest in the pattern. The purl “slopes” are easy to follow in both written and charted instructions and the pattern is repeated on the front and the back of the socks.
There’s a left and a right foot in the pattern, but whichever way round you put these socks on, you’ve got a slope up and a slope down, making a mountain or a valley on the front and back of the socks. They’re just perfect for someone who is ready to head for the hills … or who prefers their mountains to be on their feet instead of at their feet as they’re about to climb them!
As always with my designs, there is a heel flap heel. This is a heel stitch heel (you can see the other type of heel flap I designed, the Ribbed Heel Flap here) and the double layer fabric that’s created as you slip stitches gives a lovely cushiony heel. Why do I always choose a heel flap? Well, other people will tell you that other types of heel are easier with no picking up of stitches as you do with this heel, but I like the fit of this one. It works whatever size of foot you have and whether you have a high instep or not. It’s easily adjusted for bigger or smaller feet, and I haven’t knitted a pair of socks for anybody who hasn’t been able to wear this style of heel. Even if you’re new to socks, you’re learning so many new things anyway that adding in picking up some stitches down the side of the heel flap really isn’t going to overload you 😉
Do hand knitted socks wear out faster in your walking boots? Well, it will depend on how much walking you do but I can tell you that the socks I’ve hand knitted for both my girls have seen them through treks across the Andes in Peru, the Annapurna range in Nepal and more recently, up Mount Kilimanjaro. Both of them carried a pair of bought socks in case of seriously wet weather as wool doesn’t dry as quickly as the bought socks fabric, but they never wore them.
If you think that your socks could do with some extra padding, you can use the Reinforcing Heels, Soles and Toes tutorial to carry the heel stitch under the sole of the foot and all the way to the toes. You will use more yarn using this method and that’s something that you’d need to think about when you buy your yarn.
The yarn that these socks were knitted in is Baa Baa Brighouse Baa Baa Brew DK in the shade Strangstry. I think this particular shade might have been discontinued, but you can still buy the yarn in a number of other lovely colours. Now, these socks were originally knitted to feature in a book (the Sock Knitting Bible by my lovely friend, Lynne Rowe. I have re-written the pattern in my own Winwick Mum style and if you’ve got the book, you’ll see that their style is different to mine but the socks work out the same), and they were never intended to go up any mountains. Baa Baa Brew is very nice to knit with, but it’s 100% British Bluefaced Leicester with no nylon content, so I wouldn’t recommend that you used this yarn for walking socks as it will likely wear out pretty quickly. However, if you really did want to use it for out and about socks, you could try using a yarn that contained nylon for the heels and toes.
In addition Baa Baa Brew comes in 100g skeins and I really didn’t have much left from this pair knitted to UK size 5 on 44sts. If I’d continued the heel stitch under the socks to reinforce the soles or I was knitting a bigger pair, I’d have needed a second skein. If you choose to knit this pattern with a specific 8ply (DK) sock yarn (which will contain nylon so you don’t have to worry about being out and about), you can often find 150g balls which give you much more leeway with your sizing and reinforcing options.
The other thing that you can choose to do with this pattern is to knit it with 4ply yarn held double. This is a great way to use up leftover yarn and you can blend the colours however you like to give yourself a really unique pair of socks. It’s worth bearing in mind, though, that although there’s more meterage in a ball of 4ply than a ball of DK, once you hold it double then it works out as less. You would still probably need two balls of yarn if you were going to knit the socks entirely in 4ply held double, but if you ran out of your ball of DK or thought you were going to, 4ply leftovers would work well for the toes and/or the heels.
The pattern uses a 3.5mm needle and is written for four sizes for a foot circumference from 8-9½” (20-24cm) and there are both charts and written instructions for each size. If you’ve never knitted socks before or if you feel you might get stuck, you can use the Winwick Mum Sockalong tutorials to help as all of my sock patterns are based on the Basic 4ply Socks pattern, even the double knit ones!
If you would like to buy a copy of the Sloping Hills Socks pattern, I would be delighted, thank you!
You can buy a copy of the pattern through Ravelry or Payhip if you are overseas (they work out the taxes for me). It’s a big pattern – 10 pages – but you don’t have to print them all out (I’ve given you the breakdown of which pages are pattern and which are info pages). If you read your patterns through a tablet or computer, it’s not a problem but I didn’t want you to use up all your printer ink if you didn’t have to!
You can find the Sloping Hills Socks pattern here on RAVELRY and if you’re not a Ravelry member, you can use this button (it doesn’t take you to the website):
You can also find the button on Payhip: PAYHIP.
Love knitting DK boot socks? Check out my other pattern release – Well-Travelled Socks – and during November 2025, you can buy both patterns for £7 instead of £9 (£4.50 each) using code DK-SOCKS-DUO. You can read more about the Well-Travelled pattern HERE. **Apologies in advance – the only way I can get the code to work on Payhip is a cross-sell which will charge you £7.02. I’m happy to refund the 2p if you get in touch! xx
If you do use Ravelry, you can link to the project page here if you would like to – and do let me see your photos either by email or on social media as I would love to see how you get on with your very own pair of Ryegrass Socks!
Thank you so much for supporting me! xx
This pattern is based on my Basic 4ply Socks pattern, which means that even though you’re using a thicker weight yarn, you can find photo and video help in the Winwick Mum Sockalong tutorials. You can find out more here:
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