Well last week marks a first for me. I now officially have 2 different socks on the needles! Usually I am very intense and disciplined. I work until the entire pair is finished before starting another pair. The last 2 weeks have been ultra-busy here and this week will be too, but I've been able to take a break and blog today! I blame this situation on the Beaudelaire socks. To my astonishment it isn't really hellish torture to knit with 2mm needles. It's NOT as fast as 4mm like I have used for socks most of the time but I have found the texture of the fabric satisfying and I guess because it's a sock you can still make progress without feeling like you've been knitting forever!
All this stuff about Yarn Diet means that as stash gets used up I have been moving and re-organizing. I came across some Regia (OK I hear the groans from Regia-haters) I had bought a few months ago from http://www.Littleknits.com.  I bought on a whim it because it was self-striping and the loud colors appealed to me. Having been a fan of Lucy Neatby for years I have drooled over her book Cool Socks for Warm Feet for just about as long. I never made any of the patterns because they all called for finer yarn and needles than I was willing to use. However, now that I have conquered my Fine-Gauge-phobia I thought I'd give her Mermaid socks a spin, using my own sock method, of course! That means I did my usual cast-on and toe increases which took longer because now I'm using a higher stitch count (54 instead of 38) so my Mermaid spiral doesn't start at the toe like hers does. Actually her mermaids are cuff-down and since I'm a die-hard toe-up, too bad! I have tried them on and find they fit fine but I'm sure they will be too tight around the instep so I am increasing the stitches within the pattern for an inch before I start the heel.
I'm starting to think I may be making a few pairs using this stitch. It really makes self-striping yarn into something interesting. If you look at the color changes in this sock you'll see how uneven the stripes would have been. What's more I don't think there is ANY repeat in this yarn, it's all just random order color and stripe width. The diagonal twist adds a nice dimension so there is at least ONE similarity between the pair. I can't see any way for them to be alike at all otherwise.