Hunter Hammersen joins us this week with the inspiration behind her newest pattern, Phaeodaria in Haiku:

I'm easily distracted. I'm sure it says something unflattering about my character, but if you ask me to do the same thing all the way down a sock, there's every chance I'll get bored and wander off somewhere around the first heel turn. Given what I hear from other knitters, I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way. These socks are my answer to that little problem.

The leg is one big, twisty, unapologetically intricate chart full of all sorts of cabled goodness. Now of course i understand that keeping those sort of shenanigans up through a whole sock might be a bit much (even the easily distracted among us want a break from time to time), so things do calm down a little on the foot. There you switch to a slightly more subdued cable that repeats every few rows (even then you're working a nifty center cross cable that I find unreasonably satisfying, so you won't wander off). The combination makes for a sock that holds your attention with out ever being too hard.

The lovely stitch patterns (and of course the name) were taken from the drawings of Phaeodaria (tiny marine organisms with amazingly complicated mineral skeletons) in Ernst Haeckel's 1904 book /Kunsformen der Natur/. I'm a sucker for old scientific illustrations and find them a marvelous source of design inspiration!

So if you're looking for a lovely sock that will keep you entertained, Phaeodaria might be just the ticket. And if you're looking for something a bit more subdued, you can totally come raid my knitting basket. I've got a whole stack of half knit socks that would very much love to be finished!