If you are expecting a pattern for these socks, you are out of luck. I’m calling them Chimera for a reason.

The toes and the heels come from Toe Up Two-At-Time Socks by Melissa Morgan-Oates. I love Melissa’s toe cast-on but her heel structure is phenomenal! Look at this!

A toe-up heel that is slip stitched!

I had planned on knitting Melissa’s Tuscany socks but I just didn’t warm up to the stitch pattern. Nothing really wrong with it but I decided I wanted something else. I ripped back to the heel and started thinking about what else I could use for the leg. I wanted to break up the color segments a bit. (No, I do not remember the name of this sock yarn. I bought it at Sock Summit, conscientiously recorded it into my Droid and then lost everything when the new Droid update was loaded onto my phone.)

I kept thinking about slipped stitches. Then, alternating slip stitches. Finally, I came up with “Twisted Alternating Slip Stitches”. The pattern is as follows:

Round One: Slip one, knit one

Round Two: Knit into back of slipped stitch, knit one

Round Three: Knit one, slip on

Round Four: Knit one, knit into back of slipped stitch.

I’m not claiming to have invented this stitch pattern. I’m sure it is in a stitch dictionary somewhere with a lovely name. But, I bungled around on my own to work it out so I’m pretty proud of myself. I love the thick, woven feel it has given the leg of my socks. 

I thought about falling back on my usual K1back, purl 1 ribbing but I had quite a bit of yarn left. I love nice thick, rolled over cuffs so I knit 2, purl 2’d until I couldn’t stand it any longer and finally cast-off!

I have some yarn left over but I am going to start collecting all of my fingering weight scraps in one place. Eventually I will have enough to knit into some sort of colorful scarf.