Mosaic 22: pinwheels

This pattern struck me in that the pinwheels all line up on top of each other. With many of the patterns the major design element repeats in more of a brick like fashion, as in mosaic 5, 6, 7, 9, 12, 18, 20, 21, etc., or the pattern has a shadow effect where both colors do the same thing, and I had assumed this one would too. 

The pattern doesn't pop as well with this choice of yarns (dark red is Unplanned Peacock's Twinkle twist in colorway Agate, while the colorful yarn is Unplanned Peacock's Peacock sock in colorway Arthur), but I'm still pleased with how the colors work together. Variegated yarns always present a difficulty in making sure there is enough difference between all the colors of the two different skeins. The biggest issue with these two skeins is that the dark red skein occasionally has lighter red highlights, and that lighter red is in the variegated red/orange/yellow yarn. This makes the pattern unclear in those spots, forcing your eye to figure out the pattern there based on the pattern elsewhere. Luckily humans are good at pattern spotting.

Like in Mosaic 20, I did my decreases after the heel into the patterned portion of the sock, at the boundary between the bottom and the pattern. I feel that this has the advantage that when standing up, none of that boring bottom is showing, and the sock looks entirely patterned, without actually being so. The disadvantage is that each row of pattern starts somewhere else in the pattern-you can't simply start at the 5th stitch in the chart, or whichever. Instead I had to work backwards each row from where the pattern was better established to figure out where I was this time. I suppose I could have marked up a copy of the chart, and that would have worked perfectly well, but I don't typically have a physical chart with me, and it seems like a lot of effort to mark up the picture on my phone constantly.

In other news, in the back of some of these pictures you can spot my newly refurbished knitting bag! About two years ago I designed the pattern for this bag, drew it on my computer, uploaded the design to Spoonflower (where you too can buy the fabric), bought the fabric, and helped my mom to sew it into a bag. In the intervening years the bag has suffered, as the canvas that the sheep were printed on wasn't super durable (Spoonflower doesn't use that fabric anymore, and has what looks to be a much more durable canvas now). So my bag was looking pretty ratty, with all sorts of holes (Luckily the lining was made of ripstop nylon, and that has shown no inclination to wear at all.). Just this past week my mom and I recovered the bag with some brand new fabric-I did the hand sewing around the bottom, and she machine sewed around the top. I'm very excited to have a nice looking bag with bright colors again!

Mosaic 21: disheveled octothorps

I think that this pattern looks like poorly drawn tic-tac-toe boards (octothorpes). The yarns are the same as in mosaic 19: the navy is from Kim Dyes Yarn, colorway: String Theory-blue, yarn: sourdough sock, and the tweedy white is from Yankee Dyer Yarns, colorway: In the buff, yarn: yankee tweed. This pair is pretty standard-striped bottoms, pattern on the top. Nothing particularly new, other than the mosaic itself. I do like having a bit of variation in the stripe width though, particularly when there is so much contrast between the two yarns. 

Mosaic 20: cable

This is the last pair of cascade heritage sock yarn in red and white-I'm making these socks a bit on the small side (women's size 6 or 7?), because that's all the yarn I have. With this pair I did two new things, both relating to the bottom of the foot. First, I used the reinforced bottom again, though this time I put stitch markers around the bottom 28 stitches, using only them for the reinforced bit, and did my decreases into the pattern. It meant I had to carry the white yarn all the way down the side of the sock (approx 18 stitches?), since I didn't want to cut it and then have to weave it ends. I think I prefer this location for the decreases though, when doing the reinforced bottom. Second, I did the knit-slip-knit-slip rows on the first row with a given color, and then knit straight across the bottom on the second row. You can see how the stitches don't line up into a perfect row, like they did with the previous sock.

Mosaic 19: Basketweave

The navy is from Kim Dyes Yarn, colorway: String Theory-blue, yarn: sourdough sock. The tweedy white is from Yankee Dyer Yarns, colorway: In the buff, yarn: yankee tweed. When I realized I'd run out of navy for mosaic 13, I went to my local yarn store to see if they had a navy sock yarn. They didn't have a solid navy, but they did have this lovely tonal, and they helped me pick out the tweedy cream to go with it. (My mom's local yarn store didn't have a solid navy either, nor even did my my mom's stash (or at least the portion of it she searched), but a thorough search of my own stash (clearly only the last resort-we had to exhaust all other options first) revealed a navy that I used to finish up the socks.) I have a fondness for tweeds, but even my mother, who says tweed yarns look like they picked up all the waste bits of fluff off of the floor and spun that into the yarn, really likes how these socks turned out.

The name, basketweave, is what Barbara called it, and I've been unable to come up with anything more interesting. I like it though, even if I can't come up with a good name for it. I put a thick, reinforced bottom on this pair, by which I mean that for the first row with a color I simply knit across the bottom, but for the second row I knit, slip, knit, slip, etc. all the way across. It's the same stitch I use on my heel flaps. I make sure to slip the stitches in the second row of a color so that there are distinct rows. Maybe next time I'll try doing it the other way, for interest. I think the next sock might have to have this type of bottom on it, because there's something else I want to try out-I want to just have a solid width of the reinforced, and have the pattern come all the way down, which means that the decreases will have to eat into the pattern not the stripes.  

Mosaic 18: diagonal boxes

Another sock out of the cascade heritage sock yarn in red and white. I think I have enough yarn for one final pair of socks, but it might have to be a small pair-maybe another set of anklets.

This pair has the pattern going all the way around the foot. I made the heel flap a bit longer than normal, and when I continue the pattern across the bottom I only decrease every 4th row, or every time I do the second row of the white. So the decreases go on for quite awhile-at least 1/3rd of the length of the foot. The socks are quite comfortable though, and I like how they fit my foot, so I don't think it's an issue. Normally I try to do a bit shorter of a heel flap on these socks since I do the decreases more slowly. I tried doing the decreases every other row, as I would do on non-mosaic socks, with mosaic #2, but I decided that was too quick. I could try doing the decreases every third row, but that means they are constantly changing which color and row number they're in-by decreasing every 4th row I can more easily remember to simply decrease on the second white row every time.

As this is a pattern with a strong diagonal, I made sure that the second sock is the mirror of the first, so the diagonals go the opposite directions. I really like the look that gives the socks, and how the diagonals meet when you put the two feet/socks next to each other. The strong diagonal nature of the pattern also makes it a great candidate to turn into a zigzag pattern, like I did with mosaic #2 and a few others. I'd like to come back to this pattern at some point to do a zig-zag version, but for now I must press on to pattern 19!

Mosaic 17: the maze

I had a really tough time trying to figure out what this pattern reminded me of. Someone said it reminded them of a maze, so we'll go with that. I decided to try something different, so the bottoms of these socks are solid red. In order to make sure the top wouldn't be too long, every other time I did the white rows across the top, I also did red rows across the bottom. It turned out to be way more fiddly than I expected, and I didn't particularly enjoy it. If I did the needles on circulars, with the top half of the sock consistently on one needle and the bottom on the other, that would have made it easier. On double points I found it more tricky than I expected. Also, it became more challenging to tie the top to the bottom consistently. Ideally I would knit the pattern across the top in the white, then purl across the bottom with the red. Next I'd twist the yarns together, before purling back across the top with the white and knitting back across the bottom with the red. I'm not sure I remembered to do that more than a handful of times though. I played with several other techniques to make the transition between top and bottom seamless, and in the end I pretty much decided it was too much of a pain to bother with. If I really wanted the solid bottom with this pattern in future, I'd probably modify the pattern, and make the long white stretches only one row thick, while also making the long red stretches three rows thick. By thus decreasing the ratio of white to red I should be able to only keep the white on the top without having to do make-up red rows on the bottom.

I ended up working on these socks while attending a reunion at Cornell, and was able to claim that I was doing red and white socks on purpose! It wasn't true, of course-this yarn (cascade heritage sock yarn) happened to be the next thing on top of my stash, so I'd picked it, and I'd already used it for the handcuff socks last week. I still have some left over, so it will appear again, but two pairs in a row with the same colors is enough.

Mosaic 16: Handcuffs

These ones look like handcuffs to me. No one else has been able to convince me otherwise. The yarn is all cascade heritage sock yarn, and I'm really pleased with how the colors work together. You can't really tell in the picture, but I went with a striped bottom for this pair. 

Mosaic 15: Fishes!

This pattern apparently looks like a variety of animals to various people. I see fish, but others see birds. The purple heathered yarn is knitpicks stroll, while the white is cascade heritage. I did the reinforced bottom again.

This time I had the transition between the top of the sock and the bottom happen halfway around. Generally I'll carry the pattern over into the bottom half of the sock, by half a pattern on either side. So, for example, if the pattern has an eight stitch repeat, I'll do an extra four stitches of the pattern on each side. The trick with doing that is that after the heel the white yarn is still at the top of the heel, so when I want to start the pattern (with the white) four stitches earlier, I have to cheat so that I don't have a long float across the back for those four stitches. I could, of course, cut the yarn and restart it in the desired place, but then I'd have more ends to sew in! So I cheat by twisting what would be the long float in with the white stitches, like is done in traditional two color knitting techniques.

Mosaic 14: willow trees on their sides

This is my least favorite pattern to date. I liked it better once someone pointed out that, if rotated, they could be trees. As written though, I am not a fan. I don’t think my color choice really helped matters. In their balls these two colors (both knitpicks stroll) look decent next to each other, but I don't think they play very nicely in the sock itself. I decided to speed through this pair by only doing the mosaic on the cuff, and doing a plain, unpatterned foot. Because of how mosaic knitting patterns work, rotating the pattern is not a trivial thing to do, so I will hurriedly move past this pattern.

Mosaic 13: Aliens flexing their muscles

When I started this pattern I was sick. I did the calculation, and decided I would have plenty of the blue to make another pair with it. Turns out that when I’m sick, my ability to do critical reasoning is impaired, and, well, I ran out of the navy yarn. Turns out Regia no longer makes their stretch yarn. Also, neither my local yarn store or my mom’s has a plain navy yarn. I ended up reorganizing my entire stash, touching every skein, to find a skein of knitpicks stroll in navy. It isn’t quite the same color, and it doesn’t have quite the same feel, but in the mosaic it’s really hard to tell. The two toes do feel different, and look slightly different, but I don’t think you’d notice if you weren’t looking for it. The white yarn is still the cascade heritage sock yarn.

I enjoyed varying the locations of the white stripes on the bottom, and I really like how the uneven striping turned out.