Mosaic 12: Sprig (Barbara’s name) or 'The flowers that bloom in the spring' (my modified version), or men shrugging their shoulders

I was so excited about this pattern that I had to do my modification of it first! I wanted to make the top of the flower a different color from the leaves, which meant that the pattern needed to be changed (green yarn is knitpicks glimmer stroll, pink is knitpicks stroll, and white is cascade heritage sock yarn). I also knitted it from the top to the bottom, instead of bottom up, in order to have the flowers vertical when the sock is worn. I was super pleased with how these ones turned out. I keep meaning to write this one up into an actual pattern, so that others might be able to make them too! I imagine them with each row of flowers being different colors, or even just with a higher contrast flower color. Still, I have a schedule to keep if I’m going to get through all of these patterns, so we continue…

This is the pattern as it is written in the book (blue is Regia stretch sock, white is cascade heritage sock yarn). To me, in this orientation, they look like men shrugging their shoulders. I misjudged the pattern slightly-I thought I could get away with never doing a row of white on the bottom, and so the tops of the socks are longer than the bottom. I’m not thrilled about that, I’d rather have the bottoms longer than the tops, but I think it works. I do really like the pattern.

Mosaic 11: Crosses

As someone who isn’t religious, knitting a pair of socks covered in crosses felt a little odd. The black yarn is Knitpick’s glittery stroll, and the rainbow is West Yorkshire Spinners (WYS) Signature sock yarn. The WYS yarn looks very similar to the Opal, but it has a different shade of blue in it. Both are equally as nice to knit with. I know that a pair of socks I made with a different Opal sock yarn has stood up really well, far beyond all other sock yarns except crazy Zauberball. I don’t know if the rainbow Opal will stand up the same as that Opal from the past. It’s always hard when I’m making so many socks, because I never see how well certain sock yarns wear. The socks typically go to many different homes, to people who wear their socks very differently and with highly varying frequencies. Plus they don’t tell me when the socks start to wear through. So I have very little data on how all these sock yarns wear in comparison to each other. It’s frustrating. I’m forced to pick yarns based on colors, feel and, of course, price, and make guesses based on that as to how long the socks might last. Maybe someone at work has a machine that tests abrasion, and I could put swatches of various sock yarns in that…

Mosaic 9: Crescents

This is another pattern where I made a zig-zag version of the pattern and never knitted it. The colors (colorful is Brew City Yarns’ Premium Draft Sock, Once More With Feeling, and the black is Knitpicks sparkly stroll) I used for this pattern didn’t have as much contrast, so the pattern didn’t stand out as well. I was disappointed, apparently to the extent that I never took a picture of the finished socks.

I wanted to finish this skein, now that I’d started it, and since the mosaic knitting didn’t work really well with it, I decided to try something different, that I’d been wanting to try for forever. I call them my ‘big bird’ socks, because they remind me of Big Bird’s legs. They stretch a lot, and I really like the texture. They were a lot of fun to knit, and a nice rest from all this mosaic knitting. I think the colors worked much better together for these socks than the actual mosaic ones.

Mosaic 8

I found the book. I don’t even remember where it was hiding anymore, but I do remember that the search for it prompted me to actually organize my fiber room, and get all the knitting books together on the shelf. Finding the book allowed me to determine where I had been in the sequence, and that I’d skipped patterns 8 and 9.

These socks are little anklets for two reasons. First, because I keep being told that people like anklets, and second, (and perhaps more importantly) because I was worried about running out of yarn. I finished these with only small scraps left of the yarn, so that worked perfectly.

I was very proud of myself for remembering to purl the second row of the dot in these socks, so it stands out nicely. Previously it always took me a pair of socks with that pattern to remember that lesson.

Mosaic 10: Chain

We now jump ahead. The reason is because I never actually carry the mosaic knitting book with me. Instead, I take pictures of the patterns with my phone, and just carry my phone around instead. But what happens, then, when you misplace your copy of the book? And you don’t have a picture of the next pattern? Why, you call up your mother, who happens to have her own copy of the book, and ask her to send you a few patterns while you go in search of your book. In my vast experience, such events are most likely to occur when moving house. For future, I would recommend taking pictures of the next 10 or so patterns before moving.

So now we’re skipping ahead to pattern 10. The yarn is Panda Silk (52% bamboo, 43% superwash merino, 5% combed silk), and showed up at the same time that the book went missing (a gift from that wonderful mother of mine). The colors are what I had, rather than a purposeful choice. Hopefully someone with the appropriately sized foot will like them. I was pleased that the contrast is high enough that the pattern shows up nicely.

Mosaic 7: Rainbow fish

Another pattern where I was sure that I’d done a zig-zag version! I’ve searched through pictures and my big bag of socks, and find no evidence that I did anything more than plan them. Here you can see what the inside of a mosaic sock looks like (Opal sock yarn, again). The floats are, at the largest, 3 stiches, so not particularly long. Because with mosaic knitting you are only knit with one color at a time, you can see bands where the floats are minimal, and also that the floats come in bands of rainbow then black, then rainbow and so on.

Something I noticed around this time was that the colors stand out more than the patterns, such that a group of these socks made from the same yarn all look very similar, even if the actual mosaic pattern is very different. This helped me decide that it was okay to only do one pair of socks per pattern.

Mosaic 6

I am shocked to find, as I write this, that I only did one pair of this pattern! The reason being that I nicely charted up a zig-zag version of patterns 6 and 7, and apparently I never then knitted them. I will have to do those next, I fear.

Here you can see the torture I put the pattern through on the bottom of the sock (Opal) where I’m doing the decreases. If I were ever to write up these patterns, I’d carefully plan out something to make the bottom of the foot look somewhat decent. As it is, I fudge it. I generally knit straight up to the decreases as if they don't exist, and then on the other side I determine where in the pattern I am and knit away as if nothing happened. Thus I’m at least self-consistent (generally), such that the bottoms of the pair should match. I can’t help feeling though, that with a little bit of planning I could make the bottoms look pretty as well.

Mosaic 5

I really like this one, even though I only did two of them. I’d forgotten my lesson from mosaic 1 though, where if you want the center dot to pop, you need to purl the second row. As it is, the central light colored dot doesn’t pop too well, but I like it anyway. The rainbow is the Opal sock yarn again. I feel really lucky to have stumbled across that rainbow yarn at Webs, when visiting their shop in person. I’d originally picked it out for my mom, but as soon as I started this project I decided I had to keep it for myself, and get her to send me some black Opal sock yarn! I then proceeded to buy more of it, since it worked so well. For the blue and white (Alpaca Sox and Dye For Me: dancing toes) I decided to try knitting stripes every row. The pattern didn’t compress as much as some of the others, so I thought I might be able to get away with the every row stripes. You can see that the bottom is still longer than the top, though not as much as for the green and yellow herringbone (mosaic 2) socks. I think it worked fine-it looks fine on a foot, and so what if it doesn’t lay perfectly flat? It would if I could be bothered to block it…

Mosaic 4

Another pattern, another three pairs of socks. We’ve got the knitpicks stroll in green and yellow, with stripes on the bottom. Nothing particularly new there, except, of course, the mosaic pattern. We have a knitpicks stroll+chroma rainbow pair, with the pattern going all the way around the foot. This pair was the turning point for me, where I realized that for these socks the heel flap had to be shorter, otherwise the decreases could go on forever! For the third pair (Opal sock yarn, both the black and rainbow), I took the pattern and made it zig-zag. I’d noticed when knitting the first two pairs that, if I wasn't paying attention, I could keep going with those thingys before switching direction. Then I’d have to rip back, and actually change at the right point. I decided with the third pair to do it on purpose, and voila! This was the result.

Mosaic 3

Knitpicks stroll red and pink, with only every third pink stripe actually knitted across the bottom. For the rest, I knit across the top of the sock as usual, and then I turn the sock around and purl that pink back to the start. So for all of these socks the place I change colors is along the right side of the sock (as viewed when you have it on, and are looking down at your foot). So I start from the right side, and knit across the top of the sock until I come to the left side. Then I turn the sock around, and purl back across the top until I come back to the right side. That way I’ve done two rows of pink across the top of the sock, and not knitted anything along the bottom.

I really like this pattern, and at this point I’d figured out three different bottoms, so we got three different pairs from this pattern. The blue and white ones (Blue: Alpaca Sox, White: Dye For Me dancing toes) have the reinforced bottoms (and are super soft and comfy!). The rainbow pair (Knitpicks stroll and chroma) has the pattern going around the foot. You can see that the decreases after the heel take up most of the foot. They seem to fit just fine though.