Bandelier socks, explained

A brief aside before I begin, I’m incredibly annoyed with the weather lately. Yesterday morning it was nice and sunny and I thought “excellent day for taking photos!” Except then I had to go to my volunteer shift, so by the time I got back, the sky was gray and overcast. And then last night, it started snowing and was quite blustery for a good half an hour, and even though we were supposed to get snow today, now it’s just windy and NOT SNOWING. La Niña, you can move on any time now.

Luckily, I do have a brand new pair of stranded colorwork socks to keep my feet warm, even if the sky is not giving me the snow I’d like.

The first modification I made was to use sport weight yarn instead of fingering. No, this was not for any particular reason, other than the fact that I’m a dunce. When I found the Brown Sheep Nature Spun in a store, I got all excited and snatched up 8 colors of the sport weight; got home and realized I only needed 7 colors of fingering weight. After numerous swatching fiascos, I finally settled on a needle size that would allow me to keep the stitch count in the pattern AND get the fabric over my heels.

That didn’t account for the difference in row gauge, however, so I had to get a little creative at the heel and toe areas. At the heel, I split one of the row sections in half and did the first half on the leg, then finished it up on the foot. Please don’t ask me what I did at the toe; I’m not sure I managed to repeat that section on the second sock, so I couldn’t even guess.

Weaving in the ends was a pain; blocking them was an adventure (it involved an iron, and then prompted me to do a bit of ironing of other clothes). They’re a bit snug, but very warm. Now, if it only it would snow, so I could test out their insulation ability.