The last day or two has been a bit of a whirlwind.  The book is done and out in the world.  The electronic versions are going out immediately, and the print versions will go in the mail as soon as they arrive from the printer.  So far, the response has been absolutely lovely.  Lots of folks have said that they bought it for the patterns and then surprised themselves by reading the rest of it, which is about the nicest thing I think a knitter could say.

I’m going to indulge myself and show off a few of my particular favorite patterns over the next few days.  Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with all of them (you can find that on Silk Road Socks or ravelry if you happen to be interested), and I’ll still come tell you about the rest of the knitting I’m doing too.  But just for a bit, I really am itching to tell you about a few of these.  Keeping them more or less quiet all this time was rather a strain on my natural chatty tendencies!

The first is Salor.  These use scads and scads of tiny cables to create lots of intricate detail.  The pattern continues down the heel and finishes neatly at the toe.  They look complicated, but (at least according to my magical sample knitter) they really aren’t that hard to do once you have the pattern down.  I am unreasonably taken with them.

These will benefit from a nice firm yarn that has really great stitch definition.  These were made in Handwerks Textiles Sock Plus 8 in the color Paprika.  This is a really nifty yarn (I used it in Gramercy and I’ve got a secret project underway using it right now).  It’s got 8 very tiny plies and a lovely tight twist, which lets it make marvelously crisp clear stitches.

In an attempt to both spread the Sock Plus 8 love and to make me blush, Laura is offering a 20% discount on all Sock Plus 8 yarn until February 15 if you use the code SilkRd20 when you check out.  If you’ve not had a chance to check it out yet, this might be the perfect time to get yourself a little indulgence.