It has gotten HOT here. Really really hot. I always forget how HOT hot is.

So, since working on any of my any other projects was unappealing, I started some new socks:



First of all, a pair of Retro-Rib socks using some Cherry Tree Hill. Yeah, it's all pooly. If I had been thinking maybe I would have alternated rows from different ends of the ball. But, you know - sometimes I kind of just like to let variegated yarns pool as they will.



Second, I started a pair of Snicket socks. I came about this because I spent some time rearranging the various download-patterns I have, putting them in those plastic sheet-protectors. And I ran across this pattern and realized that it would probably work really well with that yarn (which I was originally going to use for those all-over-cables socks in the Interweave sock book, but I think I like the yarn for these better).

The color is what I, as a quilter, would call "poison green." Not sure why that designation other than that I suppose it looked to someone like the color something poisonous would be. It's sort of an acid yellow-green. It's one of those colors, I think, that you either really like or really dislike. (I happen to really like it.)

The yarn is from Dream in Color and it's described as "veil dyed." Not sure how the process works but the claim is that it pools and flashes a lot less than conventional hand-dyed or hand-painted yarn.



And another green yarn (this one a variegated with green, a greyish-tan, and yellow - it reminds me a bit of lichens on tree branches). I'm going to use this one for the Monkey socks. I might not have considered making these (for some reason I'm put off by the photographing of the finished sock on a "fake leg," at least when that "fake leg" is displayed next to a real person. It's just one of those weird little quirks. I think it's because I remember a short story I read a while back about a one-legged woman who had a prosthetic leg and there were some kind of off-putting elements in the story). At any rate - I saw these made up in Ewe Knit (the last time I was in there) in some Sockotta and I thought, "you know, those might be fun to make."

One thing all three patterns have in common is that they use some kind of a twisted rib - either every row or every other row you knit through the back loop on the knit stitches. I haven't used that much before, I'm not sure why, I suppose it's that I don't think of it. But I like it - I think it makes the knit stitches "pop" out more, and also, I've read that it makes the ribbing cling better.

(You know? Maybe we need a "Knitting Mythbusters" to test all of those conventional-wisdom things about knitting. I don't mean stuff like the Boyfriend Curse - that's too subjective to be testable, and there are all kinds of false correlations going on there - but I mean the little bits of technical "received knowledge," like that sock yarns always wear better with some nylon in them. It would be interesting to see the difference in wear between a plain and nylon-plied yarn [they'd have to be spun exactly identically otherwise] at a very tight gauge like 10 sts/inch. I suspect there'd be little difference.)