Charlotte: you are right, the sock toe is a little folded. The toes are done using a "star toe of four points" (as Nancy Bush would describe it), and they don't decrease down quite as fast as they might, so the toes are just a wee bit "floppy." It shouldn't matter when I wear the socks with sandals; the straps will "take up" a bit of that floppiness.

And on the other question: If I do design a vest pattern (which I'm actually contemplating; I can see what I want in my mind and if I can transfer it to paper AND convert that to a pattern...), I probably wouldn't sell it. For one thing, I'd probably only design one size (mine; which would be 42-44" inches). But if I do, I'll post instructions for it on the blog (or make it available as an e-mail file to anyone who wants it). It seems most for-sale patterns, you need to design a range of sizes and I'm not sure I'd be ready for that. Especially for a cabled item, which would be more of a challenge to resize. Also, it would probably be heavily borrowed-from from existing patterns (like from the Interweave "Grand Plan" book) and I never know how much change is sufficient to be "different" from a copyright perspective (for that matter, some might argue that giving away a highly-modified pattern is wrong itself. But if I put the cables in and figured out how much wider I needed to make the fronts to account for the cables...)

What I'm thinking thus far: 2x2 rib on the bottom band, arm bands, and button band. "Homes of Donegal" cables running up the fronts, with a small (probably 4-stitch) cable on either side of them. The back, maybe something like rice stitch, some kind of texture (even though I always groan at those dense knit-purl textures like moss stitch because they take longer, they do look nice). And it would have a v-neck. And I'm even imagining those menswear-style leather buttons (you know, the ones with the four little sections on them?) as the buttons.

The fact that I can "see" it so clearly makes me think I can do it. Oh, it will take months - and I will probably wait until I finish the Honeycomb vest, or at least get further on it before I try to design something. But maybe what I need is to try my hand at designing now. Who knows, maybe I'd be good at it.

Perhaps do the back first - the simpler part - to get the sizing down and be sure that it seems like it would fit right. And then design the fronts to work with the back.

I didn't get any pictures taken last night, and this morning was too hectic (I'm trying to get back into my usual schedule of "on campus by 7 am") so I'll show the quilt I finished over break tomorrow.