Living in color

The title is not, in any way, to imply that I think I've been doing any sort of black-and-white living, not daily nor in my knitting (actually, looking back over the last years-worth of knitting, I seem to gravitate toward wildly colorful yarn. So there!). Rather... if anyone other than Chris made it through the monster of a meme/questionnaire that I self-indulgently filled out last week, you would have noticed that I declared 2007 (and, I guess, the rest of 2006) the year of color-work knitting. That's right -- I want to "master" the art of fair isle. So... two nights ago, I decided to start this. I didn't go to bed until I had gotten to the heel, that's how addictive I found it.


This is a slightly modified version of the Huron Sock from knitting on the road. I really wanted to wait until it was finished, but the foot has slowed me down significantly, and I'm too impatient to wait any longer. I changed the colors (obviously). I'm not wild about the two of these together in a pattern like this. There's not enough contrast and it's a little... wild? In a strangely conservative way. I added stripes to the foot, rather than continuing the "lice" design, which seemed genius to me at the time (reinforces the foot, makes a nice, cushioned bed, etc.). It was only when I got to the first round after the lice row that I realized I was gonna have to either a) carry the blue behind the brown across the whole top of the foot for three out of every four rows to continue the striping on the bottom, or b) weave in a s**t load of ends if I snipped every round except the lice round. I tried it both ways -- carrying the yarn behind won out. It is slowing me down. A lot. Meaning, it will take me three instead of two days to finish the sock. But... I'm in love. And this is all technical prep so I can make this:

Ah, winter sweaters...