I got your tartan right here

So hey, lookee! I've got another free pattern!

See, what happened was that, with a week left until the party today, I hadn't heard back from the designer of the plaid socks that I wanted to make for my friend's 50th birthday. So I designed my own instead. It even comes complete with a nice little Celtic-ish cable pattern on the heel flap for extra jazziness.

Unfortunately, I was flying blind, as my friend and his wife moved earlier this month and were without Internet connectivity until about yesterday, so his wife never got my email asking for his foot size info. So I just had to wing it. They ended up loose on my husband, who (so he says) has fairly small feet for a man, and is shorter than my friend.

So I'm taking that as a good sign that they won't cut off the circulation in my friend's feet.

I meant for the plaid to be horribly loud and eye-bleed-inducing, but I think it actually ended up looking rather nice.

Although I'm sure it won't be once he pairs it with the purple-and-gold tartan blanket he picked up recently - he says he wants to use that as a cloak. Throw in another clashing tartan on his trews and I think the result will be suitably horrendous...just the way he likes it!

And he did indeed like the socks. Very, very much. He and my husband spent a lot of the party showing them off to various guests. :)

So if you're at all inclined to go through the hassle of working a combination of intarsia and stranded knitting with five different colours (yeah, it's fiddly as all hell), followed by a cable on the heel flap, you too can have these socks. You can get more information by following the link for it in the "My Designs" section on the left, or just go right ahead and...