Bright Holidays....

...or what you get when you knit up brilliant, almost phosphorescent, sock yarn.  On Saturday, I went over to a friend's house to continue learning about circular sock machines.  I took a variety of yarns with me, but settled on a skein of self striping from The Loopy Ewe's Spring Fling 2011 goodie bag.  The base is Lorna's Laces, and it was a test run for a self striping line.  The colors are bright - and not normally my cup of tea, but hey, it's summer and I felt like stepping out of the comfort zone.

After much ado, including re-skeining the whole skein after I had it jump off on the heel of the first sock, we managed to get a completed sock.  You start knitting at the top, work your way down and separate for a heel just like you would a regular top-down sock. 

When you finish the heel, you come back and add the rest of the top of foot stitches back into the rotation to complete the foot portion.  The toe is essentially another heel. 

Remove the waste yarn, pick up the live stitches and graft the two ends together to finish off the sock.  They used 76 grams of the 100 grams skein, so there is a little extra to go along with the second skein I have.  (More socks? scarf? knitted stripped garland?)  Either way, I have another new pair of socks to work with when the weather starts to get chilly.

PS - Doesn't the color remind you of holiday lights?