Socks made from Laceweight Yarn

My first purchase from KnitPicks was pure impulse. I read about a sale, and visited the website for the first time. Actually it was also my first yarn purchase from an online yarn store (not counting Ebay). I was taken back by how *cheap* the yarn was! Granted, it was all laceweight yarn I was looking at. Still...$2-$4 for a hank...I totally splurged and bought 4 hanks each of 4 yarns [details here]. I bought for of Shadow in Campfire, which is kind of a brownish, earthy orange. I used over half of one hank of it to make a lace scarf for my mom. I bought 8 hanks of Gossamer in 2 colorways. Sunrise is a variegated light blue with light pink. Sounds and looks nice until you try to figure out wth you're actually going to make with it. Top Hat is a variegated yarn in red, black, purple, and various shades between. It looks beautiful, but as a lacy item...I don't know. The Alpaca Cloud looks really thin and is very soft. It looks beautiful and I still haven't decided on a project I'm willing to use it up on. I got it in a moss green that is a nice soft, muted green color. Here are pictures of the Gossamer variegated yarns.

Sunrise:

Top Hat:

So, while looking at wool/silk blend yarns I can buy to make a sweater out of, I was considering the cost effectiveness of buying a laceweight and doubling it up to get a fingering weight yarn. Somehow I realized that socks are made with fingering weight yarn, and I have a bunch of laceweight in variegated colors that I don't know what to do with. Also, variegated yarns are perfect for socks in ways they could never be perfect for any other garments. Thus, I gave it a try and started on a pair of socks using the Gossamer laceweight in the Top Hat colorway. I also figured that by doubling the yarn I'd be able to prevent any nasty pooling.

I just finished the first sock last night, and the results turned out rather nice. They're soft and they feel sturdy. The colors do not exactly pool either. They ended up striping...but in various ways. It seems like each section of the sock ended up with a different striping pattern. I don't have a picture of the completed sock, but here's a picture I took while the sock was in progress. By the way, the pattern I used was the one I used for my first sock attempt, Aran Braid Socks for Teri.

In the picture, you can see the there is a striping thing going on in the leg of the sock. There's a sort red-black-red stripe pattern going on with bits of purple in between. In hte back and forth portion of the heel, the stripe turned to black-red-purple, repeated. The gusset, being many more stitches around than the leg, created a thinner stripe pattern with a line of black alternating between the red-purples. As the circumference decreases for the foot, the striping returns to something more similar to the leg, but not quite as regular. In the leg, there were long stretches where both strands would be the same color...either red or black. In the foot, somehow the colors got offset enough that the same colors did not overlap together.

Overall the effect is not bad. I like it. I don't expect to be able to duplicate the striping patterns on the second sock. This did not take all that much yarn either. I still have a bunch left from the first hank. Assuming the yardage is accurate, this took less than 220 yards. It will be interesting to see how far the rest of the hank will take me into the second sock.