I like socks that have a ribbed component that extends around the leg and down the instep. For me, they fit better than those knitted all in stockinette stitch. But I find plain ribbing quite boring and I often don’t like how it looks in hand-painted yarns. For these socks, I wanted to use a pattern that had minimal purl stitches to interrupt the horizontal stripes in the yarn and, at the same time, would provide a diagonal component to counteract those stripes. I therefore chose an eight-stitch rib punctuated with right-twists on one sock and with left-twists on the other. The beauty of right- and left-twists is that they can be performed without a cable needle for speedy execution. To give sharp boundaries to the columns of knit stitches, I twisted the first and last stitch in each group by working them through the back loop.

These socks begin at the toe with Judy’s Magic Cast-On. They feature short-row heels that allow the color stripes to show to best advantage and end with a bit of twisted rib followed by Jeny’s Suprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off. The upper leg is worked on one size larger needles to accommodate the calf muscle.