I’m always experimenting and creating new easy and satisfying textures that can work with the beautiful variegated yarns that indie dyers produce—I’m such a sucker for those glorious skeins, especially if I see one in person. I have found that stockinette stitch is OK as far as it goes but adding a bit of texture to a sock pattern that doesn’t get lost in the crazy colors really makes for an outstanding sock.

Recently, I came across this great yarn from a brand new to me and it inspired me to get cracking and design something that would take advantage of the fairly long color changes evident. The little repeated motifs I ended up with put me in mind of the constantly moving little drips one sees running down a windshield while driving in the rain. It’s a comforting image I mostly associate with many a car drive when I was a kind of bored kid staring at the car windows and zoning out while safely riding in the back seat of the car.

I also wanted to produce a longer leg than I normally design so I so I ended up using just about every gram of this luscious yarn for the leg and foot and then opted to use harmoniously colored scraps from my stash for some unmatched two-tone toes. I love the resulting look! Of course, if you are not a fan of of the toe treatment, its easy to work the leg an inch shorter and thus have enough of the main color yarn to work the entire sock.

These socks are worked from the top down with a heel flap and standard gussets a nd a wide tow. The socks shown are worked in size L and easily fit a women’s US size 11 (European size 41). This L size would also accommodate the smaller men’s sizes while size XL would be perfect for larger men’s sizes. The stitch pattern results in a stretchy fabric making this sock particularly appropriate for folks with thick calves or ankles, high arches and the like.

Yarn recommendations: for the main color, variegated and long run color change yarns are great. Solids or tonals would also be OK. For the toes, contrasting solid colored yarns that pick up some of the colors in the main yarn are strongly suggested.