My March socks

Here are the Husband's socks, or rather, here is one of the Husband's socks. This was a completely different venture in that I had the yarn and I had a stitch pattern I wanted to use, but I had to come up with the pattern myself. Not too daunting a task, but it was a little time consuming. The pattern book- Ann Budd's Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns, which I got for Christmas from my brother-in-law, thanks!- gave pattern numbers up to a 10" foot circumference and the Husband's feet are 11" around. He has huge legs and feet. I did the math, figured out the numbers, then thought, "Cast on that many? Seriously? I don't think his other pair of socks asked for that much. Sure, the legs have ribbing but 90 some stitches? Come on." The stitch pattern itself was an 8 stitch repeat, so I debated between 80 and 72 before settling on the 72, because his other socks were 72 and that was all ribbing. Whoops! Should have picked 80, because once I'd finished the leg, worked the heel and then finished off the gusset I had him try them on and they were too tight. I had to tear the whole thing out and size it up. Sigh. The larger size worked quite nicely, though.

What stitch pattern did I use? Well, I had Nicky Epstein's hat book from the library because I'm designing myself a hat, so I've been looking at patterns for ideas. I liked her reversible diagonal rib stitch that she used for one of the hats and so did the Husband. Check it out over there. Cool, huh? I didn't realize until I saw the pictures that it makes a spiral on the leg. In person it's more of a stair step look. In fact, if you look at the pattern on the right side of the picture, it does look more stair step like. Anyway, we both liked how it turned out and the Husband is happy he has a new pair of socks. I even managed to finish the first on our anniversary, so good deal there.

Here are the mechanics of the socks:
Yarn- Knit Picks Palette, color is Twig, two skeins. Yes, I got cheap Palette for my Husband's socks and at the same time bought myself the slightly nicer Essential. I am a horrible wife.
Needle size- 3. I do pretty much all my socks on 3s, but not the pair I'm doing now and using the aforementioned Essential. 3s make the fabric too loose.