Surprise! Pattern Release: Swirl Bumps

I got a nice surprise today when I checked my e-mail mid-morning -- my new sock pattern is up on the Knit Picks site! You saw peeks of these socks before, but now I can show you what they look like when they're not in a jumble in my project bag. Meet the Swirl Bumps socks:

These socks were designed for Knit Picks' newest sock yarn, Hawthorne, a lovely hand-painted superwash wool/nylon blend. One of the perils of using a hand-dyed yarn is that there can be a tendency to pool, so I used a straightforward knit and purl pattern to add texture to the fabric and break up any pooling. (Another peril is ending up with two socks that are slightly different colors!)

I'll be perfectly honest: These are not groundbreaking socks. They're your basic cuff-down sock with a heel flap and gusset, but the patterning is fun, and you reverse the direction on the second sock, so the end result is that you have socks that either swirl toward each other or away from each other, depending on which sock is on which foot. The pattern is written to fit a foot circumference of 8 (9, 10) inches/20.5 (23, 23.5) cm, so these are good for just about anyone teen and up. And, incidentally, the yarn happens to be on sale right now, so if you wanted to try it out, now would be a good time. (I will add that this yarn, while delightful to work with, has somewhat skimpy skeins if you're a bigfoot like me, so depending on your foot size, you might want to get two skeins.)