Are these the ugliest hand knitted socks ever?

Remember the other day when I was proudly showing off my lovely Tacit fingerless mitts that I had made and I mentioned that I was knitting something really loathsome? Here they are

For me these are wrong on so may levels.

The pattern is one I've wanted to use for a long time. It's called Hermione's Every Day socks. Not too complicated but just enough to keep you alert. The wool too was one I've had for a while and wanted to use - Blue Moon Fibre Arts Socks That Rock in a special colourway they dyed to raise funds for Medecins Sans Frontiers. So it should have been a wonderful project but it wasn't.

I'm normally very wary of using textured patterns with variegated yarn because the one tends to get lost in the other. However on Ravelry quite a lot of people had posted photos of this pattern done in a variegated yarn and they all looked fine or fine-ish. Some of the colours weren't my cup of tea, but then that always happens when you look at popular projects on Ravelry, because one man's 'delightful little red' is another man's 'mouthful of vinegar', but I thought that overall it should be an OK pattern for a variegated yarn. I was wrong. It might have been better had the yarn not had those quite substantial white areas in it, because the other coloured bits were lovely

 

See? Really nice colour mix.

 

Not only did I not like the way the pattern got lost in the colour, I didn't like the size. These socks were supposed to be for me but they are far too big. I should have known when the first line of the pattern said Cast On 64, because I never cast on 64 stitches for a pair of socks for myself, I cast on 56. But you know I have had the thing where you cast on the normal number of stitches for a patterned sock and then they end up too tight in the leg because the pattern draws the fabric in. Also I knit a lot of socks by a designer called Rachel Coopey and quite often they start with 72 stitches and they fit perfectly well. So although doubtful about the 64 I wasn't so confidently doubtful as to reduce the cast on numbers. Which, as it turned out, was a mistake.

 

Fortunately the OH said he liked both the pattern and the wool and he said it convincingly enough for me to allow him to have the socks when it turned out they fitted him - there was a time when I thought they'd be too big for him too.

 

There was also a small mistake in the pattern which I wasn't amused about, although at least I was wide enough awake to spot it and make the appropriate adjustments.

 

And just to make matters worse I was fairly convinced most of the way through the second sock that I was going to run out of wool. In the event I finished it with about four inches spare, but it was a damn close run thing and I stayed up far too late last night to finish because I couldn't go to bed without knowing whether I would have enough or not.

 

One thing I did like about the pattern was the garter stitch edging on the heel, as here -

 

 

which made picking up stitches after the heel was turned a lot easier than usual.

 

As it happens I am making another pair of socks from this pattern, because I wanted to see what a normal pair would look like in it. These ones are for me and I have cast on 56 stitches and am using an officially solid yarn, although it has a few subtle variations in tone. There's one done already, pic up when the pair is finished.  So far, so good!