Mosaic 40: llamas doing yoga?

It’s holiday knitting season here, and I’ve been frantically trying to get all the projects done in time, so I have all sorts of projects on the needles right now, and keep failing to remember to take pictures. Particularly since pictures really need a nice sunny day, and those have been in short supply.

The first step in my holiday knitting was to get these socks off the needles! They’re the next installment in the mosaic series, pattern number 40 from Barbara Walker’s mosaic book. I’m told that, if you look at the light space (not the black) you can see llamas, or people doing yoga. I haven’t quite managed to see them, but people have been very insistent about this, so I guess I’ll have to take their word for it?

I decided to go with a reinforced bottom for this pair of socks, so I continued the k1,s1 from the heel all the way down the bottom of the foot. This time I also tried doing it on the bottom of the toe-I’m not quite sure that I like it, but I’m glad I tried it. It makes the toe look more pointed, as the slipped stitches pull the bottom tighter than the top. It seems to fit fine when put on.

The colorful yarn is my prize skein from socks on vacay! It is Knitted Wit’s Unicorn Giggles, and I think it works really well with the solid black opal yarn, which I’ve finally used up! My mum gave me a whole cone of the stuff, and it’s gone! Now I’ll have to use something else for my contrast color. I think the next several pairs of mosaics will be trying to use up a cone of white sock yarn she gave me…

Mosaic 41

I finished another pair of mosaic socks! I didn’t like the pattern for this one, so I did it in yarns that had some color overlap, so you can’t quite see all of the pattern. I also only did mosaic on the cuff.

Mosaic 42: Marigold ribbons

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I’ve had these socks on the needles for months now, but I keep getting distracted. I miss the mosaic patterns! These ones are the same yarns as the zig-zags: the black is opal sock yarn, and the yellow is Copper Corgi’s Savannah Sock in the color ‘wearing and tearing’. I think that color is exactly the color of my marigolds! ‘Ribbons’ is the name that Barbara Walker gave the pattern. For anyone with her book at home, be aware that this pattern has a mistake in the book-the right most square of row 15 should be black, not white. This is the first mistake I’ve found!

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This is my 39th pair of socks for the year (599 overall), and this Tuesday (yesterday) is the end of the 26th week, so I’m averaging 1.5 pairs per week! The little anklets from socks on vacay are helping my sock count a lot.

Mosaic 38: Betsy Ross squashed octopodes

First, the name. I see eight armed critters in these socks, and while octopodes may not be the most correct plural for the word ‘octopus’, it is certainly a fun plural. Also, I peeked ahead at some of the future patterns, and there’s another one that features a repeating octopus motif, so to differentiate the two I picked on the circle of dots in this one that reminds me of the circle of stars in the Betsy Ross American flag.

Second, this is my first pair of socks with an afterthought heel! I’ve been knitting socks for forever, and yet I haven’t been super adventurous with my sock construction. I like the way my socks fit as they are, and haven’t seen the need to try and fix what isn’t broken, particularly since my foot dimensions seem to require a fairly long heel flap to keep the socks from falling down all them time. For these socks, however, I wanted a smooth color transition all the way down the top of the sock, and I wanted the heel to be out of the colorful yarn. In this case, an afterthought heel is ideal, as the main body of the sock is knit first, with the same number of stitches, so that not only is the color transition smooth, it also keeps happening at the same rate (after a heel flap there are more stitches, so color transitions happen more quickly until the gusset is done). The afterthought heel worked just fine, and I took pictures at the various different steps.

The colorful yarn is Perth from the Queensland collection, and the white is a spool of 100% wool my mommy gave me for christmas. The two are much closer to the same weight than the black and rainbow was, so I plan to pair the rest of my Perth yarn with the white. Since it’s also thinner, I think I’m going to wait until the 16 stitch wide patterns (they start around #44?), and use 10 more stitches around, as these socks turned out rather narrow.

Mosaic 39: 2P vortex shedding

I decided to go a bit out of order, and knit 39 before 38, based on what yarn was readily available. Different people variously saw little men flexing their arms, trees and other designs in these socks, but I decided to name them after the most nerdy-2P vortexes. These were described in a 1988 paper by Williamson, who drew a schematic of it. I also found a picture of them here, in Figure 5E. I’m jealous that people studying fluids can take such pretty pictures of their experiments, while my solids aren’t as intrinsically visually appealing.

The green yarn is by zauberball, and the black is Opal.

pair 8 for 2019, 568 overall

Mosaic 37

I feel that all rainbow fingering yarns have various pros and cons. This rainbow is Queensland collection's Perth. I really like the colors, however it it’s a bit uneven, and it isn’t super soft. I’d like to be able to make the two socks match, however the colors don’t repeat. I haven’t yet found a sock yarn with a nice color transition over the length of the sock, with an even thickness, that’s soft and yet wears well. I have two nice rainbow yarns where the rainbow occurs relatively quickly with a sharp color change, but I’d like a longer rainbow yarn too. The black yarn is Opal sock yarn.

Mosaic 36

Whatever this pattern is (I can’t decide what it reminds me of-an octopus with only four legs, whose remaining legs are curled up into balls at the tips? a whomping willow with only four branches as viewed from above?) it was fairly simple to memorize, which was nice. The yarn is knitpicks again, and the bright blue has sparkles! The dark is also a blue, a heathered navy in fact, though it’s hard to tell in these pics.

Pair 3 for 2019, 563 overall

Mosaic 35: birdies

My mommy spotted the birds in these socks, can you? I’ve modified the pattern so that it looks even more like birds, and I hope to knit that one soon! The yarn is knitpicks stroll, and the red is tweedy, hence the colorful flecks. I did the heel with the slip stitches not lining up, so the reinforcement at the bottom shows up as stripes.

Pair number 2 for 2019, pair number 562 overall

Mosaic 34: ducks on the water

The last pair of socks of 2018! I’m not sure that inverting the pattern worked as well as I was hoping it would. I much prefer the dark little boxes with light insides on the light background, rather than the reverse where the dark shapes are bigger. The yarn is knitpicks stroll, in the colors ‘granny smith’ and ‘pine’.

Mosaic 33: snowflakes!

After making the ‘Let it snow’ socks, where I duplicated part of this pattern as a snowflake, I focus on the snowflakes in this design. I like knitting snowflakes and looking forward to playing in actual snow… The navy yarn 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. 

All of the mosaic socks on this blog are currently going into a big box, awaiting the day when I complete the last pattern from Barbara’s book. A few of them go in with future owners identified, but mostly I just knit the pattern at whatever size is convenient. This pair is one of the (currently two!) with a future owner identified! It’s a surprise though. Now to finish up all the rest of the socks so I can hand these ones over.