2007-05: Petroglyph socks

Yarn: Lisa Souza Sock! Merino, Color = Petroglyph, 2-5/8 oz
Needles: 2.5 mm
Pattern: My own. Toe-up with short row toe and eye of partridge heel, tubular cast-off; both socks worked at the same time.

I thought I purchased this yarn last year at Stitches West, but I was mistaken. I bought Lisa Souza sock yarn in Mahogany & Mardi Gras at Stitches West 2006. Petroglyph was purchased at TKGA last year.

It's incredible how much yardage you get in a hank of Lisa Souza Sock! Merino. The put up is 4 oz/560 yds. I only used 2-5/8 oz for these socks, so I have about 192 yds left over. That's what I call yardage.

The colorway is wonderful and captures rock/cave colorings beautifully. So when I considered knitting with this yarn, I wanted to do something to compliment the colorway, not force a pattern on it.

I thought about rocks--stacked rocks, a rock wall, caves, etc.--and the different shading and textures one might see. Sunlight hits rocks that stand out, creating shadows in the recesses. To mimic that, I purled the light colors and knit the dark colors. The first try wasn't successful because if you purl into a dark stitch, the purl bumps will be dark on top and light on the bottom. With that realization, I refined the pattern to only purl when the yarn from the ball AND the stitch to be purled were light in color. Everything else was knit.

Click on the photo for a closer look.

I think it's unique design because what type of stitch you work is dictated by the color of the yarn. It's not deterministic because the definition of "light" is relative. Perhaps rules based design is a better description.

2 WIPs down, 3 to go!

Related posts:
Yarn purchase
Thinking of starting
1 of 5 WIPs