If you are a member of the UK Sock Knitters Group on Ravelry you may already know about their year-long KAL themes. It was a challenge from them a few years ago that first got me started on my sock designing journey - I think it was a seasonal theme and my first “proper” sock design Winter Footsteps was as a result of taking part.

This year though, they have surpassed themselves with a Periodic table KAL - inspired by a love of all things to do with Chemistry. As a biochemist by training this immediately appealed to my inner science geek and I couldn’t wait to come up with some ideas based on this theme. The group is great fun and very low-stress - with all manner of tenuous connections to the monthly theme accepted, even welcomed.

Last month was Hydrogen and so I knit socks with bright pink yarn from Truly Hooked - called Big Pink Beaver (Hydrogen - water (H20) - Beaver)

This month the theme is for chlorine or iodine. As you can probably tell from my colour selection I opted for the yellow/green of chlorine. Additionally I’m having fun with a cable design which is based on a 17 stitch panel (17 being the atomic number for chlorine).

It’s been a while since I designed a cable sock pattern and it’s really enjoyable to get the squared paper out again and wrestle with a few numbers.

Even if you aren’t up for another challenge right now, do go over and check out some of the projects on the group. It’s really inspirational stuff.