So, I always meant to do mosaic 25 again, the way Barbara meant it to be done, namely as crowns. As I was knitting my little aliens though, I kept thinking how I could tweak them, to make them more like aliens, since I started seeing crowns the whole time I was knitting them. So I tweaked the pattern, and came up with this. But then, do I knit two more pairs, one that is mosaic 25 and one that is my tweaked version? I still have 85 more of these patterns to go, so I decided that my tweaked pattern still looks enough like crowns, and I could give it a test knit as crowns instead of as jellyfish.
With plenty of beads in stock and a desire to no longer have lots of little beads in stock, I decided that crowns really need jewels. Plus I wanted to try a different beading method, to see if I was happier with the results than I was for mosaic 23. If you remember, the beads were not at all centered in their little boxes in mosaic 23. It made me grumpy. Perhaps if I had more beading experience I could have foreseen this result, but beading is new to me. So this time, I put all 75 beads on my black yarn before casting on. I expected them to be super obnoxious to deal with, as I knitted the cuff, but they were actually just fine, and haven't caused a single issue. I do have to keep pushing them down the yarn, but they move relatively smoothly, and don't seem to be damaging anything. I also wasn't sure how well they'd stay in their appropriate place once knitted, since they're large enough to be threaded on two strands of yarn, but they seem fairly secure. The first time I came to a little black box-to-be, I'd put a bead on that stitch. When I came by it on the second pass, I purled the stitch, taking care to make sure the bead was on the outside afterwards. I am very pleased with the result.
I'm a bit less pleased with the heel-I did a short heel flap, such that I wouldn't have to fuss with the riverbed gusset. My complaint is that the stitches decrease too quickly-I did them every other row, and I think I would have been better served to only do them every fourth row (i.e., every other black row). These are shorter socks though, for smaller feet, so hopefully they will still fit well enough. They certainly weren't at all uncomfortable when I tried them on before the toe, but the mosaic 25 socks feel much better.
In other news, I've decided to name all the mosaic patterns I create after songs. The christmas tree pattern from earlier is now 'O Tannenbaum', while the two colored flowers (for a total of 3 colored mosaic socks) is now 'The flowers that bloom in the spring', from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado. This pattern, in this orientation, I'm calling 'Bow to the crown', a song by Heather Dale. Upside down I'm thinking of calling it 'octopus's garden', even though it's two legs short.