My mom said these look like the grand canyon, and aptly, the name of the yarn is Painted Desert, so I named the project strata.

I made the small circumference size in the pattern. I love these because you can so easily try them on as you go. My horizontal gauge ended up being ~7.5 st/in. I did a few mods to the cuff, toe, and heel:

Cuff: 6 rows of rib and a 3 st picot BO every 5 st around the 60 st total.

Toe: More rows were needed, so I decreased as written to 40 st, then repeated the decrease row every round until 20 st remained and grafted those (successfully grafted those, I might add--take THAT self-doubt!)

Heel: I did a w&p heel cup based on 60 st total count (30 st w&p-ed), w&p-ing until 10 st remained unwrapped, then knitting the w&ps together and grafted the 60 st together at the end (again, FTW).

These aren’t exactly symmetrical or identical, but I like them.