Fiesta Feet Finale

Project: Lucy Neatby's Fiesta Feet
Yarn: Shelridge Farm Soft Touch Fingering Weight, 1 skein hand paint, 2 skeins white
Needles: Knit Picks Harmony Double Points, 2.5 mm

The Fiesta Feet, they are finished!  Not quite two months to get one pair of socks finished would make you think that these socks were very challenging to make.  In fact, they are actually not so bad to make and very hard to get bored with since what you are doing changes all the time.  I enjoyed working on them, it's just been my lack of free time since they got started that kept me from getting them finished sooner.

I won't go into all the mistakes, er, design elements in them.  Suffice it to say that I got distracted in a couple of places and since these things happened on the sole of one sock, I decided that no one but me would ever see them and I could live with them.  Life is short, ripping takes time!

While this sock looks like it might be a complicated, challenging two-color extravaganza, in fact, the only true two color per row knitting is found in the instep and sole of the sock.  Up until that point, the two colors are used on alternate rows.   While I wouldn't say that this sock is the perfect two-color learning project, it isn't all that hard, either.  I did the first sock with both colors in my left hand (I knit continental style) and the second sock carrying one color in each hand because I had a lot of issues with tangling with the first sock.  This is one of the few sock projects where I probably could have made my life easier if I had knit the instep and sole with two circs or using the magic loop method instead of knitting on double points -- I think it's just easier to deal with keeping the rhythm going when you don't have to mess around with so many needles. 

The sole of the sock was very simple -- just alternating colors and every other row was just the main base color, so you even get a little break from two color knitting.  Even though I don't consider myself very good at the whole two color knitting process, it just never felt like the repeats took that long -- probably because I had something to think about while I was working on them, and because I enjoyed watching the color progression. 

But probably my very favorite design element for these socks was the heel.  I've become a pretty dedicated short-row heel sock knitter, so I don't see myself using this idea on may own any time in the future, but this heel sure is lovely.  And, leave it to Lucy Neatby to come up with a simple heel construction that doesn't gap at the corners.  I could see using this lattice work patterning on special baby sweater -- with bigger yarn, of course!  I really like the "looking though the window lattice" that this pattern creates while at the same time creating a more durable surface for the heel of the sock.

While it's rare for me to ever want to knit a pattern a second time, I could absolutely imagine making a second pair of these (maybe with a dark background color and a variegated colorway that falls closer to my "color favorites").  Even the bobbles didn't bother me all that much -- though I would have probably gotten rid of them if there had been more than one row. 

Probably the only downside to these socks is that I was never able to score any of those see-through plastic Regia rain boots.  They'd be perfect for this time of year in Chicago and for showing off my fabulous new socks!