Proud To Be

My newest pattern, the Proud to Be socks, were created to be a celebration of you — whatever and whoever you are.

Proud to Be honors my love of color, my love of socks, my love of rainbows and all that rainbows represent. They speak to my love for the LGBTQ+ people in my life and my support of the worldwide LGBTQ+ community.  They’re also personal celebration of wrapping up my first year as a full-time professional designer and knitting instructor. In creating them, I wanted to honor all that’s exciting, true, and vibrant in me and all that’s exciting, true and vibrant in you.

The design for these socks evolved from my desire to add a little extra fun to the colorful rainbow stripes of Vesper Sock Yarn’s Rainbow Love colorway without obscuring the self-striping nature of the yarn. The slipped-stitch colorwork patterning does that with a pattern that is simple and intuitive to knit once you understand how it works. While it was designed to be worked over four-row stripes, the patterning will work on any self-striping sock yarn that creates stripes at least three rows tall. 

Beyond the stitch pattern, this is a good, solid, toe-up sock pattern that will teach or expand your sock skills, full of tips and tutorials on Kitchener stitch, afterthought heels, textured colorwork, and a bind-off that may be new to you — because we can always be proud of learning new skills!

Finally, they’re more than just an awesome pattern for self-striping sock yarn — they’re also a way to do good. In honor of Pride month, for every purchase of this pattern through my website, Payhip, or Ravelry shops in the month of June, I will donate $2 to the Trevor Project and the Human Rights Campaign. And if you decide to purchase the Rainbow Love yarn from Knitterly Things, Julia (the dyer who makes this awesome self-striping yarn) will also make a donation to the Ruth Ellis Center in Detroit, an organization that provides trauma-informed services to LGBTQ+ youth and young adults, particularly young people of color and those experiencing homelessness.

Happy Pride!