My love for stranded colorwork in larger scale patterns that are inspired by traditional motifs continues with these bright and busy socks

The main pattern features some shapes that reminded me of crabs (you might have to squint, lol) and so, falling back on my own German heritage, I named these my Krabben Socks.

These socks are knit top down with a double wedge heel. With this type of heel treatment there is a traditional heel turn, but there are no stitches to pick up on the edges of a flap.

Yarn recommendations: these socks can be knit with 2 or more colors. As you can see, I have used 6 colors in the pictured socks which are knitted in size L. Whichever way you go, sticking to solid colored yarns with high contrasts will yield the best results. Choosing yarns that are variegated or not strongly contrasting with each other will obscure the patterns. The heel is integral and thus cannot be worked in a separate color from the foot treatment.

As always, when working a stranded colorwork pattern that contains long floats (and there are a few here and there in these socks), care must be taken to expand stitches as you knit so that the resulting sock is not too snug to pull on over the heel. A good policy is to try on early: slip the sock stitches to some waste yarn when the leg is 5 inches long or so and try to slip it over the heel.

I knit socks on 4/5 DPNs at a time, I have attempted to generalize my instructions for folks who use other needle set-ups.