I am always fascinated by the busy little bees who visit my garden through the spring and summer. They are constantly working, tirelessly playing their crucial part in the life cycle of our flora and fauna. As a gardener, they are my friends and my helpers and I try to plant as many inviting blooms as I can to attract them into my garden.

I wanted to design a sock pattern that featured a motif honouring our busy bees. I have given them pride of place on the front of the socks, using a simple and delicate lace border to make sure they stand out from the rest of the design. The design features plenty to keep your interest whilst still allowing you to relax into the rhythm of your needles as you create a beautiful tribute to our garden friends…

Sock knitting seems to be the ‘holy grail’ for many knitters who believe they just can’t knit socks. In designing this, my first sock pattern, my aim has been to make my instructions as clear as possible to give you the skills and the confidence to create luxurious socks that you can really be proud of.

As you continue your sock knitting journey, you will probably develop a preference for either a cuff down or toe up construction. I have chosen to include instructions for both methods in this pattern as I am all too aware from my own experience that only ever using one method can put you off sock knitting entirely! I would encourage you to try both and see which you prefer.

An area of fear for many new sock knitters is the dreaded heel. I have included what I have found to be the simplest heel construction here which I feel also gives the best fit. You can find video tutorials to help you with the heel on my YouTube channel. I have also included instructions for a high instep adjustment which I use to achieve the best fit for my own socks.

I have written the pattern out in sections so that you can experiment, as your confidence grows, with inserting alternative heel and toe methods should you wish to do so. The pattern is written for magic loop but you can adapted the pattern for use with DPNs and short circular needles.

I have designed the pattern to be knitted using a contrast colour for the heels, toes and cuffs and refer to this throughout the pattern. It is however perfectly possible to knit the socks in a single colour or using as many different yarns as you wish. For my sample socks I used 44g of my main colour and 17g of my contrast colour. I used a ‘Dandelion’ sock set from Helen at Giddy Yarns. Helen is a fantastic dyer and you can find lots of beautiful sock yarn on her website.

I hope you enjoy knitting this pattern as much as I enjoyed designing it!

The pattern includes instructions for 3 different sizes - small, medium and large.