Socktember 2026 – Week 1 review

Phew, it’s been quite the first week of Socktember 2026!

Thank you so much to everyone who’s bought a copy of the September Socks pattern – I am absolutely delighted to see that it’s had such a good reception and that you love it as much as I do ❤️   I’m so looking forward to seeing lots of pairs of socks on the needles!

It’s been brilliant to see how many copies of the Basic 4ply Socks pattern has been downloaded this week too – whether those socks make it into the Knit-along draw or not, it’s so good to know that more pairs of socks are on the needles this month, and hopefully will be on feet by the time the colder weather arrives!

It’s only been a few days since Socktember started so I don’t have a lot to tell you this week in the way of up Knit-along updates, other than having seen a good few posts about choosing yarn and getting ready to start.  I’m so pleased that you’re joining in with me – there’s always a little bit of me that worries that I’m going to be sitting here doing a KAL on my own!

In the absence of other news (and I hope I can rectify that next week), I can show you my own September Socks progress because I’m going to be using this month to continue with the pairs of socks that I started when I was designing the pattern.

Pairs of socks?  Yes, that’s right!  The lovely dusky mauve shade that I decided on for my final pair was actually the third yarn that I tried out for this pattern.

Just in case you’re interested, I’m drinking Blueberry and Peach tea from Bird and Blend, it’s lovely!

Here’s my first version.  This yarn is 4ply Sock hand-dyed by Caroline of Yarn Unique in the shade Turquoise and it’s really gorgeous – those blues are very vibrant!

They also come off all over my hands but I’ve checked with Caroline and it’s not unusual for that to happen with such saturated colours.   Apparently any excess dye will come out when I block them so I won’t get blue feet 🙂  I’ve used her yarns a couple of times before and they are always a joy to knit with and wear so if you’re into hand-dyed yarns, I’d highly recommend having a look at Caroline’s website.  At the time I was designing the socks, I couldn’t find this yarn on the Yarn Unique website – I bought it from the TexStyle show earlier this year – so as much as I love it, I didn’t want to list it as the main colour on a pattern if you can’t buy it easily!

My second version of these socks was with Yarnsmiths Merino Sock yarn, the yarn that I’ve used for the final version, but in the teal colourway (2K232).  I chose this because it was the closest I had in my stash to the colour of the Yarn Unique yarn, but I knew that it would definitely be in stock on the Wool Warehouse website.

The twisted stitches were showing up beautifully and I was very happy with the sock – and then realised that there are quite a lot of blue socks featured on my patterns and I wanted a different colour!  Naturally, purple was my immediate first choice but I couldn’t find the deep purple Yarnsmiths yarn that’s in my stash (found it now – typical!) and I think the dusky mauve is the perfect colour for my September Socks so I am not sorry that I didn’t knit them in purple.

Will I finish both of these pairs by the end of September?  Honestly, I doubt it because I am already working on the Winter Haven KAL pattern for January in an attempt to not be so last minute – that’s not fair on my tech editor or my test knitters as it gets closer to Christmas!  However, I’ve got far enough with both of these socks to not want to unravel them so I will keep going with them and not leave them as half-knitted socks in my WIP box.

When I decorated the yarn room (a very small room in our house that I have commandeered for Winwick Mum 🙂 ) recently, I found more WIPs (work in progress) than I was pleased to see and I could even divide them into two sections: current WIPS and “resting” WIPs.  Many years ago, I went to a talk by therapeutic knitting expert Betsan Corkill, and she recommended having a range of WIPs to work on dependent on time and mood.  I have taken this to heart so along with my Emergency Socks, I have a range of WIPs that might be bigger than it needs to be … and I am not going to add these socks to them if I can help it!

So that’s it for the Socktember review this week.  If you’re joining in with the KALs – there are two running this month, one for the Basic 4ply Socks and one for the September Socks – it’s lovely to have you along, and if you want more info on how to join in, you can find that in the Socktember blog post here:  Socktember 2026

See you soon, and happy knitting!