I’m always on the lookout for interesting textural patterns that are a little out of the ordinary. This pattern struck my fancy as an easy knit for 2 different yarns with a bonus of producing a cushy texture that feels good on the feet and legs. This is a modified mosaic or slipped stitch pattern, not stranded. As such, only one color is worked at a time and some stitches from the previous row are slipped. This sort of pattern works easily on the leg portion—or knitted in the round for these top down socks. But then you hit the foot with its sole and instep and I decided to get a little tricky and see if I could figure out how to carry the 2-color texture pattern onto the instep while NOT stranding or striping both colors on the sole. Hah! It took a little finagling and a fair bit of test knitting to deal with all of the resulting little challenges, but in the end I pulled it off as you can see here.

Thus, the stitch pattern is a relatively easy knit but the technique used on the foot will require the expertise of an experienced knitter. The texture pattern itself is a simple knit and purl combo which I have charted out for you and is easy to quickly memorize.

Yarn selection suggestions: heavily speckled, self-striping or self-patterning yarns are NOT a great choice here—the pattern will be completely lost. Best to stick with solid colors or slight tonals in two different colors/colorways that clearly contrast with each other strongly.

Materials:

• -Yarn:
• Main color as shown: Hedgehog Fibres fingering in Fool’s Gold colorway 75 g (328 yds)

• Contrasting color as shown: Gail Callahan, Kangaroo Dyer

hand dyed fingering in pink; 25 g (109 yds)
DPN Needles in size US 2 (OR size needed to obtain the gauge) AND US size 1 (OR one size smaller than main needles used).It will make your life enormously easier if the two sets of needles are different colors; trust me on this.*

I knit socks on 4 DPNs at a time, I have attempted to generalize my instructions for folks who use other needle set ups. Having said that; I can’t visualize the technique for the instep used here on anything other than DPNs, but you are welcome to give it a shot if you think you canfigure it out. I cannot vouch that it will work on other needle set-ups, however, as I have only made these on DPNs.