Well-Travelled Socks
“Mum, I think I’m going to climb Mount Kilimanjaro next, what do you think?”
It only seemed like five minutes since not so small daughter had moved all her stuff out to her university accommodation, so I wasn’t entirely sure that I wanted her to head even further away across the world! However, I also don’t want to be the Mum who tells my girls that I don’t want them to do anything or go anywhere because of my own fears. Genuine safety or financial concerns aside, I want them to be free to see the world as they want to, to visit places that call to them and have experiences that will live on for a lifetime in their memories.
“Why not?” I replied to not so small daughter, and the conversation around the dinner table when she came home that weekend was full of excitement as she told us more about the plans for the university-organised trip.
As I listened to her speaking, my head was already full of ideas for a new pair of socks. She might be travelling far away to Tanzania to climb the second highest mountain in the world – but she’d have her feet in socks knitted especially for her, a woolly hug from home to remind her that no matter how far away she was, we would always be there with her to support her and cheer her on.
That’s how I think about socks, you know. I think about them as moral support in your shoes for someone you love or care enough about to want to spend time creating thousands of stitches into something to keep their feet warm and dry. I might joke about socks having both love and swear words knitted into every stitch, but no bought item of clothing can contain the same emotions. I know I am very biased when it comes to socks, but I firmly believe that there’s no better way to show someone that you are with them every step of the way than for them to walk out in socks that you’ve knitted for them. That includes yourself, too, because we all face times where the road seems long or the mountain seems too high, but something changes because once you can knit socks, you can do anything, so wearing that energy on your own feet is a gift to yourself.
“Would you like a new pair of socks to take with you?” I asked not so small daughter, as she paused for breath in her excited recounting of the first meeting about the trip.
“Yes please!” There was no hesitation. Not so small daughter loves her hand knitted socks and I love to knit them for her. And it means that in some small way, I get to go with my girls when they go out on their travels, wherever they go. They’ve been to the other side of the world – and they’ve been out close to home with their hand knits in their boots for a shopping trip to the local town. It doesn’t matter where you travel, hand knit socks are always the best socks to wear.
And here they are, socks fit to climb Mount Kilimanjaro – or any other adventure you can think of …
the Well-Travelled Socks!
We knew that it was going to be cold at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro (although maybe not quite how cold!) so it was important that not so small daughter had some wool socks in her kit. Wool is an amazing fibre; it keeps heat in when it’s cold and it lets heat out when it’s warm (you never see sweaty sheep, do you?) and it’s cosy in a way that synthetic fibres can’t be. Plus, just knowing that the socks were her bag made me feel that a little part of me went with her. That’s how it is with hand-knits.
I’ve knitted socks for not so small daughter before for her expeditions – the Don’t be Koi Socks for her travels around Japan and a couple of pairs of Sound Waves Socks for last year’s trek in the Annapurna mountains of Nepal – so we know that hand knits will serve her well for lots of walking. She does also carry a pair of bought walking socks with her in case her feet get very wet as the wool takes longer to dry, but fortunately she’s never had to wear those as the weather has never been that bad.
The yarn that I chose for the Well-Travelled Socks is West Yorkshire Spinners Wool Revival, a double knit blend of 80% recycled British wool and 20% nylon, and this colourway is called Sage. The “recycled” part comes in as the wool fleece used for this yarn is left over from other yarns that have been spun in the mill. Rather than throw away the leftovers, they are blended with nylon and sent to be carded, combed and converted to “tops” which can then be re-spun into new yarn. You can see a video of this here on the WYS Wool Revival page, and you can read more about the WYS mill and the spinning process here if you’re interested: West Yorkshire Spinners – A very modern mill.
This is a relatively new yarn to the WYS yarn range and I got my hands on some early balls of it when I went to see my friends at West Yorkshire Spinners just before it was launched. “Do you like it?” they asked me, showing me the range of colours laid out on the table. “Ooh yes!” I said, giving it a good squish. And then the question I always ask them, “Do you think it would work for socks?” I left with four balls of the yarn (well, they were offering!) and I tried the yarn out on a pair of socks for me to make sure that it would be OK for walking socks.
Once I was happy with the yarn then it was time to think about what sort of pattern would work. Not just for not so small daughter, of course – I wanted this pattern to be something that anyone would find comfortable on their feet, no matter whether they were walking hundreds of miles, putting their wellies on to walk the dog or simply wearing a pair of boots to the shops. I had three main considerations:
1 How they would feel if your feet got hot whilst walking – I didn’t want anything that would feel too tight;
2 A pattern that would show nicely above boot cuffs – we all know that hand knit socks are socks worth showing off, right?
3 A pattern that would work well with DK yarn; yarns don’t all have the same stitch definition and some stitch patterns show up better than others. I wanted a pattern that would work whatever yarn was used.
I thought about colourwork and cables and tried a few ideas out, but nothing really spoke to me in the way I wanted it to. In the end, I had a chat with the yarn (yarn always knows what it wants to be) and it was this simple pattern that was just perfect for this pair of socks. Are they mountains and valleys? Are they waves in the sea? Are they life’s ups and downs? They are whatever you want them to be, and being well-travelled doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve headed into the back of beyond with your rucksack. There’s more than one way to travel through life.
The rest of the pattern is wide ribbing. I wanted to use rib so that if your feet got hot in your boots or if you have the sort of feet that change shape throughout the day (or night, if these are to be bed socks), the ribbing will stretch with your foot to keep the sock comfortable. Ribbing also helps the sock to stay up so there shouldn’t be any risk of these sliding down your leg and under your foot. Not so small daughter chooses to walk in leggings and pulls her socks up over the top of them; the ribbing stretches so that her socks don’t go out of shape, and because they are wide ribs then there are only a couple of purl stitches across the foot so they shouldn’t be uncomfortable against your foot if that’s something that you might be concerned about.
My sock patterns always have heel flaps because I like that sort of heel and think they fit most people’s feet well as you can adjust for high insteps or bigger feet. I chose to use the Ribbed Heel Flap for this pattern – this is something that I designed way back in 2017 when I started to think about how a heel flap could fit better if you have a wide foot. The Ribbed Heel Flap has purl stitches between the slip stitches, unlike traditional heel stitch which has knit stitches. This makes it stretchier so even if you’ve got a wide foot, you can still wear a heel flap sock. (And my proof of this is big daughter’s boyfriend with wide UK size 14 feet who finds his heel flap socks extremely comfortable!)
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.
Now, let’s talk about the yarn for these socks. Wool Revival comes in 100g balls and I just about got a pair of UK size 5 socks knitted on 44sts out of the ball. If I’d continued the heel stitch under the socks or I was knitting a bigger pair, I’d have needed a second ball. If you choose to knit this pattern with a specific 8ply (DK) sock yarn (Wool Revival works for socks but wasn’t designed especially for that), 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. I knitted a second pair in West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4ply and I chose Spruce because not so small daughter likes green … but I ran out before the toes. Again, they were UK size 5 socks on 44sts but 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. My solution was to use a different colour for contrast toes (this is Cobalt) and I think they look fabulous – but if you like the look of this, I would prefer for you to do this intentionally and not because you’ve run out of yarn!
My test knitters tried a few different yarn brands and they each got a pair of socks that worked out to the same gauge as the pattern, but I would always recommend that you do a quick swatch just to check, unless you’re familiar with the yarn already or you like living dangerously 🙂
Want to see the socks in action? Here you go! This was taken before dawn on the last push to the summit of Kilimanjaro in August 2025. The temperature was -11 degrees Celsius and not so small daughter was very glad of her cosy socks!
She made it! She’s got a smiley emoji face as the altitude made her face puff up and she would not thank me for showing the world. Her socks are hidden beneath her waterproof trousers which became an essential layer against the cold.
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 Well-Travelled 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 – 11 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 Well-Travelled 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 – Sloping Hills Socks – and during November 2025, you can buy both patterns for £7 instead of £9 (£4.50 each) using the code DK-SOCKS-DUO. You can read more about the Sloping Hills 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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