A pattern inspired by a pair of socks made by Tia Barborita (“aunt Barborita”). Tia Barborita lives in the village of Panoias (southern Alentejo, Portugal). Forty years ago she used to knit socks for her daughter and this was her favorite pattern. The original socks were made of fine cotton but my version is designed for modern sock yarn. They are knitted using the traditional portuguese knitting techniques: knitting in the round on five double pointed needles and always purling unless absolutely necessary. They begin at the cuff and end with a simple spiral shaped toe.

If you don’t knit in the portuguese fashion and prefer knitting over purling just do the following (these notes are included in the pattern):

• replace all purling with knitting and all knitting with purling
• replace P3TOG with SK2P

The pattern is currently available in PORTUGUESE, ENGLISH and “Universal”.
The PDF includes a Japanese style graph that allows for anyone used to knit from Japanese books to knit these socks without referring to the written instructions.

The pattern was test knitted by the following lovely ladies: batixa, escalla, woollenwords, amippa and fromcinthia