This is a mosaic slipped stitch pattern, not a stranded design. As such, only one color is worked in a row at a time and some stitches from the previous row are slipped. This sort of pattern works easily on the leg portion-or knitted in the round for these top down socks. But then you hit the foot with its sole and instep and I decided to get a little tricky and see if I could figure out how to carry on the pattern without striping or patterning the foot or sole portion of the sock or carrying the contrasting color yarn at all. Hah! It took a little finagling and a fair bit of test knitting to deal with all of the resulting little challenges, but in the end I pulled it off as you can see here!

The stitch pattern itself is appropriate for the advanced beginner or intermediate knitter familiar with mosaic knitting (I give charted and written instructions), but the technique used on the foot will require the expertise of an experienced knitter. The mosaic pattern itself is a knit and slip combo which I have charted out using the condensed method used by Barbara Walker. In this method, every single row on the chart represents 2 rows of knitting. Since the second row is always identical to the first row in mosaic knitting, this is a useful convention. The main color (MC) is represented in the chart presented here with open or white boxes. These will be knit on the right side and purled on the wrong side. The contrasting color (CC) is represented with a black square. These are also knit on the right side and purled on the wrong side.

Yarn selection suggestions: heavily speckled, self-striping or self-patterning yarns are NOT a great choice here--the pattern will be completely lost. Best to stick with solid colors or slight tonals in two different colors/colorways that clearly contrast with each other strongly.

MC as shown: Madeline Tosh Sock fingering. 280 yds or 70 g CC as shown: Hedgehog Fibres fingering 100 yds or 25 g.