I went stash diving a month or so ago and re-discovered this Socks That Rock medium weight yarn in Mesa that I bought at Stitches West 2006. Socks That Rock was the buzz of the knitting blogosphere that year. This small company out of Oregon seemed to have come out of nowhere, was represented by The Fold at Rhinebeck 2005, and was suddenly the most sought after yarn in the world. And I had to have some.I got to Stitches early Saturday morning and immediately headed for the Blue Moon booth. It was nearly empty--in that, there was very little yarn to be had. All of the light weight STR was sold out. There were a few skeins of medium and heavy weight STR left. There were plenty, relatvely speaking, of skeins of Seduction, a merino/tencel blend that wasn't named after types of rocks. I walked away with the Mesa STR and two skeins of Seduction--Prove It All Night, which became a Swallowtail shoulder shawl and Lucy in the Sky. Lucy in the Sky is still in my stash waiting to become something fabulous.
This yarn tried to be many things. In the end, it worked best as a variation on my Basic Shaped Arch Sock pattern. I used US #2 needles and cast on 56 stitches. The ribbing is a 1x1 twisted stitch rib. I mixed up the heel a bit by using eye of the partridge instead of a standard heel stitch. I love the way eye of the partridge looks with hand painted yarns that have a lot going on color-wise.
I also love the way the triangle that is formed by the gusset and the arch shaping really highlights the angles the yarn is going in. This was a fast sock to knit compared to the socks I usually knit on US #1 or #0. I really like the way they turned out. I think this will be my fall back pattern for all of the really colorful hand painted yarn in my stash.
