The other thing my brain likes about socks is that they give you lots of chances to do tidy transitions between sections. And oh, oh having those all flow together nicely makes my brain make the good chemicals!

To move from the ribbing at the cuff into the patterning on the leg smoothly. To take that pattern on the leg and pull a few bits of it out to continue down the heel. To occasionally do something downright sneaky with the gusset decreases. To find a way to play with the leg pattern on the foot. To keep the fancy bits running, all the way down to the very tips of the toes. ⁠

Whatever the details, that stuff is FUN. ⁠

How can I continue this purl column as this grows? What if I bring this line of twisted stitches all the way over to the other side of the foot? Why can’t I just move those gusset decreases over here? What if we have those bits run into each other and taper out? Exactly how much can you wiggle stuff around, and how nicely can you move from one thing to the next? ⁠

If you give my brain a way to play with that, it’s going to enjoy itself. It’s the same thing I love in hats (how can we take what we had going on on the body and work decreases into it for the crown in some spectacular way) and mitts (what devious things can we do to make that thumb gusset grow out of thin air). My brain just DOES that. And it bounces up and down and makes all the happy juice while it’s doing it.⁠

And I’m pretty sure you’ll never beat socks for the sheer density of bits to fiddle with in a single project! I think that’s why I did socks and only socks the first long while I was designing. And I think that look (this bit runs into this bit and then into this bit and oh maybe we do something interesting along the way) is what folks mean when they say something looks like one of my socks (which is always just so lovely to hear).

And oh, oh it’s fun to be spending some time with them again!