Mosaic 32

As with the previous pair, the purple is Bugga! from the Verdant Gryphon (70% superwash merino, 20% cashmere, and 10% nylon), and the light blue/grey is the meadow light base from Backyard Fiberworks (80% merino, 10% nylon, and 10% cashmere). Even though I know they are different weights, I don’t really see that in the finished sock, other than maybe in the striped bottom? Thus far mosaics have been very forgiving with me in terms of not needing identical yarns.

When I look at this pattern I keep seeing it looking back at me, so while I know that the pinwheels are probably the major focus of the pattern, I keep being drawn to some strange four legged critter whose staring at me. I’ve been enjoying the reinforced bottom, so I decided to keep doing that for awhile. It’s easier than some of the other methods in terms of the number of stitch markers and things to keep track of, which is really nice, plus I like the finished feel.

Mosaic 31: masquerade masks

I had trouble deciding if these were dominoes, peanuts or masks, but I like the alliteration of masquerade masks, so that’s clearly what they are. I did the reinforced bottom again, with the pattern decreasing into the bottom.

The yarns are two different cashmere sock yarns. The purple is Bugga! from the Verdant Gryphon, is 70% superwash merino, 20% cashmere, and 10% nylon, and the color is called 'clown spikes orchid'. It's actually more of a sport weight than a sock weight, but it's knitting up for nice thick, warm mosaic socks. The light blue/grey is the meadow light base from Backyard Fiberworks, 80% merino, 10% nylon, and 10% cashmere, and the color is 'rainwater'. It's a standard fingering weight. Even though the two yarns are different weights, they seem to be working quite well for this balanced mosaic. I did find that I needed to purl the second pass on small grey dots, while the purple small grey dots stand out just fine even without a purl stitch.

Mosaic 30: pretzels!

This pattern reminds me of those rectangular pretzels, sometimes served on airplanes where these socks were mostly knit. The bright yarn is Unplanned Peacock's Peacock sock in colorway Arthur, while the black is an Opal sock yarn. While it isn’t my favorite pattern ever, the way the pattern is designed, with lots of k1 s1, leads to a squishy fabric, which I do like. Same heel and bottom as on the past two mosaic pairs-I really like being able to have a reinforced bottom, and I think this method of decreases works really well. I’m decreasing every other row, which means the decreases happen fairly quickly, so I made the heel flap a bit longer. That extends the point where the decreases stop further out into the foot.

Mosaic 29: pinwheels

These socks use up the last of my Oink pigments Targhee sock yarn. I really have enjoyed the feel of this yarn-it’s super springy and the socks feel really soft and cushy. I did the same style of after the heel decreases as for mosaic 28, and the same reinforced bottom. I think this combo of decreases and bottom works really well together.

Mosaic 28: candies

This pattern is very similar, yet distinct, from mosaic 27. I’m even using the same yarn! (Albeit with a different main color. The yarn is Oink Pigments Targhee sock yarn.) To make sure they had something obviously different, I decided to have a striped, reinforced bottom. Between the inherent squishyness of this yarn and the reinforced bottom, the sock should have lots of cushioning!

In terms of actual heel shaping, I made sure to turn the heel in such a way that it was 24 stitches after turning. These 24 stitches became the bottom of the sock, and the stitches I picked up along the side became pattern stitches. It isn’t super obvious with this pattern, but then what I did was to decrease at the border of pattern and bottom. I did a slower decrease than I’ve been doing on the small little reinforced heel triangle of the previous sock (#27). Here I decreased every four rows, i.e. the first black row of a black row stripe (in mosaic knitting you do two rows with one color before switching out for the other color). The foot is a bit big on me, but I think my feet are also on the small side in terms of circumference, so I think they should fit someone else really well.

Mosaic 27: Swimming turtles

If you look carefully, you can see turtles swimming along with their heads and tails tucked in, and a pretty design on the back of their shell.

The yarn here is from Oink Pigments in their Targhee Sock base. The yarn is super squishy and really has been fun to knit with. This pair of socks felt like they knit up extraordinarily quickly-I’d been planning on making them smaller, but when I stopped to check I’d done half a pattern more than I’d intended!

The heel I did on this pair is one I’ve been developing throughout all these socks, but I think it works really well for this. It has a reinforced bottom that extends the whole length of the gusset, which I like because if I wear my socks at the bottom of the heel it rarely is within that heel-turn area. With this heel I get to have the whole bottom of the heel reinforced. Also, I like the fit and how the sock looks like a foot even when it’s not being worn.

Mosaic 26: Parasols/Umbrellas

We’re back to the mosaic patterns from the book! This one is number 26, and Barbara entitles it ‘parasols’. I couldn’t decide whether to do the pattern as printed in the book, in which case the pattern would show up as right-side up umbrellas for the wearer, or if I should knit the pattern so that the umbrellas were right-side up for the viewer. I decided on this compromise, where one is right side up, and the other is upside down. I’m pleased with how they turned out, though many people didn’t seem sure when I was knitting them.

The blue yarn is Holiday Yarns Mittenacht, in flocksock, that I’ve used before, and the white is Knitpicks stroll glimmer.

Mosaic 25: space invaders

I've been looking forward to this pattern for awhile, because it definitely looks like something! Barbara intended it to be crowns, but the first time I saw it I saw jellyfish. I was convinced to call them aliens instead though, as that way I could justify using rainbow colors, and the rainbow just contrasts so nicely with the black! Both yarns are Opal sock yarn.

I played around again with the heel on these, and I really like the fit, at least so far as trying them on to take pictures goes. I think that they feel really comfy though, and I might have to try wearing a pair with this heel on a regular basis and see what I think after that. The heel is a modification on the riverbed gusset. The heel flap consisted of 36 stitches, but I picked up 22 stitches on either side. After turning the heel, my heel flap had 22 stitches. I located the decreases on the two edge stitches from my heel flap. The first set of decreases (one on each side of the foot) I did into the picked up stitches, rather than into the turned heel flap stitches. The second set I did into the turned heel flap stitches, as is typical in a riverbed gusset. I continued alternating these two decrease rounds (with a row of plain knitting in between) 5 times, for a total of 10 decreases. This meant that I had 17 stitches after the decrease, but before the top of the sock. At this point I did a standard riverbed gusset until the two lines of decreases met, getting me back to 36 stitches across the bottom of the foot.

Doing the decreases this way means that my sock will lay flat on the table, and doesn't bunch up at the transition from heel flap to decreases, like I have happen if I just try starting the riverbed gusset higher up on the heel flap. Thus I can use longer heel flaps without having to resort to a second row of decreases-the double riverbed gusset we used on Stage 2. I have a pair of mindless socks I should be finishing soon where I did a double riverbed, and they just look very strange. On a foot they look fine, but I really believe that any form-fitting knitted object should look like the form it is going to fit before it is put on. Otherwise some parts of the knitting have to stretch more, so some of the yarn is under more tension, and, well... I've done research on fibers under tension for long periods of time, and spreading out the tension more evenly is invariably a better answer. I know my socks aren't going to fail first based on their tensile strength (unless someone is using them very strangely), but it still seems better to me to aim to have the sock look like a foot, even when it isn't on a foot. This has been my major reason for being resistant to trying various different types of heels, though I clearly am willing to fuss with where my decreases go after a heel flap!

Another thing I've learned, is that while light colors really need a purl in a little box to make it pop, I can get away with just knitting all my stitches if I'm using a dark color. I've done this on a few other socks, where if it's a light color that only appears for one stitch I will purl on the second pass, but if it's a dark color I simply knit. I do always purl the second stitch if it's a lighter color, ever since Mosaic 1 where I really had to prod the little pink dots to show up at all.

Mosaic 24

There's a contra dance choreographer who, when their partner was out of town, wrote a dance each day they were gone. Sinking all their creativity into the dances themselves, the names of the dances were perhaps stinted of creativity, as they were called number 1, number 2, number 3, and so on. I feel for that choreographer, as sometimes coming up with a name just seems too hard. I didn't get any super helpful suggestions from others either, so I'm going to go with 'Mosaic 24' as a name for this pattern.

I played with the heel some more on this sock, doing the riverbed gusset on the bottom, just like in Mosaic 23 and very similar to TDS 2018: stage 5. I picked up exactly 18 stitches on either side of the heel flap, so that I could start the decreases on either side of the turned heel and have the decreases meet just as the last stitches were decreased. This is the same as I did in Mosaic 23, but for Stage 5 I picked up more stitches along the heel flap than I needed, so the decrease lines start part of the way up the heel flap. The difference between this heel and Mosaic 23's heel is that I decreased twice as quickly on these socks. I think the socks feel nicely snug around my foot, and that the (faster) decreases work just fine. I didn't have any complaints about the decreases on Mosaic 23 either though-I thought the fit of those socks seemed good as well. To be clear, with this pair I did only decrease every other row, as is typical in non-mosaic socks, but because of the nature of mosaic knitting the rows get scrunched together, making the decreases seem more frequent than they do in stage 5, for example. That's why I started with doing them every 4 rows in Mosaic 23. Both seem to work just fine, but my guess is that the slower decreases are probably better for feet with a larger circumference.

The yarns are two different cashmere sock yarns. The purple is Bugga! from the Verdant Gryphon, is 70% superwash merino, 20% cashmere, and 10% nylon, and the color is called 'clown spikes orchid'. It's actually more of a sport weight than a sock weight, but it's knitting up for nice thick, warm mosaic socks. The light blue/grey is the meadow light base from Backyard Fiberworks, 80% merino, 10% nylon, and 10% cashmere, and the color is 'rainwater'. It's a standard fingering weight.

I've determined that you can use two yarns of slightly different thicknesses for mosaic knitting, as long as your careful. I make sure that the thinner yarn is the background color, as in this sock, such that any lines that are only one stitch/row wide will most likely be in the thicker color. This isn't the first pair with mismatched thicknesses-mosaics 19 and 21 also have a thinner light color and a darker contrast color. The one place I really notice the differences in weight is actually the decreases after the heel, where with the birds-eye stitch the light rows aren't as well defined. Other than that I think I completely get away with using different weight yarns.

Mosaic 23: ghosts, turtles, geometrics, oh my!

People can't seem to decide or agree what this pattern looks like. To my knit group it reminded them of ancient greek or roman tile-work. My sister, on the other hand, pointed out some one armed turtles swimming past each other, or some ghosts waving. Another suggestion was owls. 

The blue yarn is Holiday Yarns Mittenacht, in flocksock. It's a beautiful yarn-the same I used for stage 2 of the Tour de sock. Nice and soft and squishy, plus the colors are pretty too. The white is knitpicks stroll glimmer.

I tried several new things on these socks. I decided, since I had extra beads left over after stage 3, to use some of those beads here, just on the cuff in the small boxes. I think next time I'll prestring the beads, so that I can get them fully centered in the boxes. I switched from beads to purling when I moved from cuff to foot-I think that worked well. Another new(ish) thing was the heel-flap stitch. I pulled the bird's eye stitch from the Tour-de-sock stage 1, which is very similar to my standard heel flap stitch, but with an off by one error. I decided to try it again, and I think it looks nice, though I do miss being more easily able to count the number of rows I've worked, as with the normal heel flap where the slipped stitches line up. I decided to turn the heel with the bottom reinforced, and then do the decreases on either side of the bottom of the heel, such that when the decreases meet, then I have the correct number of stitches for the foot. I only decreased in the blue rows, and I probably should have decreased every other row (in both blue and white rows), as the decreases go really far down into the foot. I also could have made a shorter heel flap, which would also have helped with that. The bottom of the foot between the decreases is also in the bird's eye stitch, which ends up looking like stripes. I actually really like that effect-you have to look really closely to see that out of every four stitches one of them is the wrong color for those stripes. I also really like carrying the reinforced bit a bit further into the heel than simply stopping right after turning the heel. I find that on socks I've worn, if the bottom wears near the heel, it is invariably just a bit past where the turning of the heel stops.

Overall I'm very happy with these socks, and I will have to try some of these things again. Particularly the beads. I still have loads of beads left...