The Hippie Hippie...

...Socks

(earworm free of charge)

I've had this idea playing around in my head for a while now, thanks to owning some Noro Kureyon Sock yarn for which I couldn't quite find a place.  You know know how it is; they have great colourways, wonderful splashes of eclectically mixed hues (unless you get lucky and find one that's mostly all greens, or russets, or some such anomaly) that call holler your name in strangely hypnotic shrieks.  And so it was thus, with colourway 256.  A cheeky little number with what was originally thought to have a pleasant mixture of pinks, purples and blues, but with the discovery of a golden mustardy yellow and an altogether more in-your-face orangey-yellow, the cat was set amongst the pigeons.  Or the tigers amongst the macaws, if you will.  

But thus the paisley/60's-inspired Hippie Hippie Socks were brought into imagination.

Or, indeed, Flower Power, man! 

The Hippie Hippie Socks give you a daisy-chain coronet and a paisley frock, and, in keeping with the free-and-easy attitude of the 60's, you have a choice of four different paisley patterns for the main part of the sock!  You can use them all in any combination, or choose your favourite and just work that one for the whole sock!  But no matter how you make it up, this sock is absolutely perfect for those brighter shades of Noro or slow-colour-changing yarn! 

Psychedelic, dude!

Starting with Heidi Bear's 5-stitch picot cast-on, the base of the daisy chain is a simple 1x1 twisted rib.  I had originally started the sock with a turn-down cuff with a bed of daisy stitch, but  soon decided it was too fussy if I was going to add the bigger flowers on top.  A good move in the end as the i-cord daisies take all the attention anyway!

To try and imitate some of the paisley designs I've seen I decided to make four different paisley patterns for this sock - two with eyelets and two with teeny bobbles, to be used in any combination.

The heel is a peasant/afterthought heel, as when it comes to yarn like this, I like (if at all possible) to see fluency of colour from one end of the sock to the other.  Of course, as you can see, Noro does like to play tricks, the little scamp.  Using the 'Crayola 64' method of colour naming (circa 1958), we start with a warm Red-Orange, then slip daintily into Tickle-Me-Pink, touching on my very favourite, Periwinkle, then moving swiftly on to Magenta.  And then WHAM!  Goldenrod is in da house. Subtle as a brick to the temple.  There are hints of the yellow beforehand, but nothing really to prepare you for tactless  introduction of such disparate colours.  Yes, yes, I know the colours themselves are hardly shy and retiring, but at least one colour usually merges gracefully into the next without causing the need to administer emergency sunglasses.

But now, as I'm on a roll...  From Goldenrod, we smoothly transition into Salmon (see? SEE? Smooth transitions can be done with PINKS and YELLOWS!), which in turn melds into Orange-Red, Yellow-Orange, Vivid Violet (okay, so I cheated and used an un-hippie 1998 colour...), and finishing up the graft on the heel with a touch of Blue-Green. (You'll note that the second sock had a much kinder transition between the Magenta and Goldenrod.  Noro: the Mercury of the yarn world.)

(That was fun!)

Anyhoo...  The foot is worked the same way as the leg, with another couple of sets of paisleys and the toe is worked quite simply to continue the last part of the pattern of the foot.  Should you wish to do a plain foot, you need to add some stitches to bring the circumference stitches back to a usable 16 or 17 stitches per needle, as the beginning and end of each paisley block is a smaller 13 stitches per needle.

But go with the flow, man!

The daisies are very simply made, either using a hippie French knitting dolly (the method I used) or by working an i-cord.  Either way, you need approximately 15 inches of knitting per flower.  I waited until the end of both socks before continuing with the daisies, but you can very easily make half the flowers before the second sock, or even choose a contrasting yarn for the daisies, afterthought heel and toe, for example. They're made by pinning the cord out into a 5-petalled flower (as shown in the photo below) and joining up the edges with one of the cast-on/cast-off tails. They are simple to attach by sewing the tail onto the cuff in the configuration you prefer  Try five per sock, or ten, or even just one - the sock equivalent of a flower behind the ear!

You can find the Ravelry pattern page HERE (available to anyone, not just Ravelers) or you can click the button below to buy the pattern now for just €3 (or £2.40 or $3.87 at the current rate of exchange).