From the designer: “When I got down to knitting the socks, I thought just X rounds of MC, X rounds of CC would get boring quickly, so I threw in the alternating short repeats. The double repeat of the solid color at the heel is to make the pattern “reversible”, a knitting palindrome, if you will. It also deepens the appearance of the heel, since short row heels in contrasting colors sometimes look oddly shallow.”

First competitive socks for Sock Madness I. Designed to be knit top-down or toe-up, knitter’s choice.

Later on in the competition, the pattern was made available for free on the Sock Madness blog.