I cast on Herringbone Rib socks in a Berocco Sox yarn (bought originally for a tie for Jimm) and although I persevered and persevered and frogged and knit up again I am not impressed with the results. The stripes are too obvious for the pattern, the colourway not subtle. Yes, I know these are supposed to be self-striping yarn for regular, plain stockinette socks. And the husband, for whom they were made, considers them too nice to wear! Plus on him, the ribbing really stretches and it looks like it laddered even though it did not. One for them, nought for me. 
Then I started on a sock from leftover yarn in my late mother-in-law’s stash. I did the gauge, established that it would be the 6 stitches per inch sock from Ann Budd's book and cast on. I miscalculated – well, I am new at this – and what I thought would be enough for a pair of nice socks ended up one nice comfy sock that I am wearing right now and which is keeping my right foot nice and toasty. Well, there is some yarn left over, and this is what Ms Brilliant is going to do: frog it to the top of the heel flap, weigh how much yarn the foot actually needs, see if I have enough left in the stash for the second one, and – if not enough, see if I can divide what is left of the leg into two and make two anklets. If that is not enough, I am considering making it a size smaller. Now I only need a small weighing scale. Yes, of course, before all that I will weigh the whole sock and see if I have enough yarn for the second, although I am pretty sure that I do not.
The Jaywalkers are also a bit of a problem. I cast them on as a treat for finishing a bunch of UFO. Then it started – here is the play by play.
“How on earth does one knit into the front and back of a stitch?!!! Off to the Knitter’s Handbook to look it up. And I thought that I can figure anything out. Bummer…. The colour is not the greatest - where is the wow of hand-painted yarns? Later. This sock is totally not happening for me. I need to rethink both the decreases and the increases = mine are a complete mess right now. I think I have the decreases figured out, but the increases are a different story. Is there really no knit in the middle? 12.1.09 Went to bed and tried to figure it out for a while and finally it dawned on me. The second knit into the front becomes the raised ridge, the first goes off at an angle pushed away by the first knit into the back. Then I had to figure out a backward way for the double decrease, necessary, because I knit Continental and not English. My knits are twisted about 90 degrees wrt to the English knit stitches. After one more frogging I seem to be on my way.”
And now – the zigzag is not happening. This yarn is too subtle for Jaywalkers. Well, an order of Sunshine Yarns aarrived today and I decided to try the Jaywalkers with Florida Sunshine. I just added it on to the existing sock to see how it would strand. Not wowy enough, the zigzag is not showing. More like Easter Egg rather than Florida.
I have to go get me some other yarn for the Jaywalkers and will save the Florida for some lacy number.
Try one of the Regia sock yarns that is striped; with handpainted socks, you can sometimes run into wacky pooling issues. There is an Opal sock yarn called Zebra that other people had knit into totally groovy Jaywalkers - when I started them, the black stripes ended up pooling into a single ugly stripe. At least with sock yarns that are "engineered" to stripe, you know that you will get zig-zagging. You might want to use your Lorna's Laces yarn for a pattern like Monkeys (which are possibly even more popular than Jaywalkers)
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