Here’s one of a pair of socks I’m just finishing.First, let’s talk about the yarn. It’s a sock blank from Knit Picks that I dyed myself. A sock blank is a machine-knit rectangle, which is knit of two strands of sock yarn together. The idea is that you paint or dye it, then knit your socks two at a time with the magic loop method. I gave this a valiant effort but I didn’t enjoy it – instead I unwound the sock blank, separated the strands, balled the yarn and knit them one at a time, the way I always do.

I painted my sock blank in a rainbow gradient. The plan was to start with yellow, then proceed through orange, red, purple, blue and end with green. I had three primary colours of acid dye – yellow, red and blue – but found that they didn’t make such great secondary colours. The orange isn’t bad, but the purple isn’t at all what I wanted. I knit the sock so that the green didn’t even end up being used. That’s how much I disliked it. I put black dots on the sock blank in a regular pattern with an eyedropper – they spread into great blotches instead of remaining nice neat dots. I like how they knit up, though, making ziggles all over the socks.

In hindsight, I kind of like the purpley bits. They aren’t the intense deep purple I envisioned here, but their silvery tone is nice. I may try to find that dye blend again, with another skein of yarn.

The pattern is called Arch Shaped Socks, and you can download the pdf of the pattern HERE. (I’m hoping this is a page that can be viewed by the world at large, but if not, you can always create a free Ravelry account to see it. The pattern is actually resident on another server.) The original pattern has only a ribbed cuff, and the rest of the sock is worked in stockinette. I ribbed mine all the way down to the toe, inspired by the projects of several other Ravellers. The original knitter who ribbed the foot goes by the Ravelry name of Wireless. I think the sock looks really cool with this extra ribbing. My leg length is a bit random – I chose to turn the heel just after the red began. My hope was that there would be enough red of pretty much the same colour that I wouldn’t end up with a line when I started to work in the round again. It worked!

I’m really happy with these socks and can’t wait to finish the second toe.

Have you knit anything lately that made you really happy? Or done something that you thought was huge fun?