Knitting Wimp Grows Up

I fear color knitting.  Intarsia, fair-isle - even the terms are kind of intimidating.  Pretty but scary.  shudder

So I've been kind of putting off the whole color knitting thing.  Later, I promise.  Well, it turns out that later has finally arrived.  It's time.  Deep breath.

My first foray in fair-isle.  Socks!

Pattern: Four Stitch Reticulated Patterns by Charlene Schurch, pattern 5 from her book Sensational Knitted Socks

Yarn: Creatively Dyed Sock Yarn (2/3 skein)
I got this as a destash so I'm not sure of the colorway; it's the magenta/pink/yellow variegated yarn
Knit Picks Risata in colorway Grass (2 skeins)

Needle size: US 2

I learned:

1. Loosen up on the tension.  I'm a "tight" knitter which usually works out just fine; I know I have to go up a needle size.  But with fair-isle, tension matters because if I pulled too tight, then the floats on the wrong side of the knitting were too short thus resulting in unsightly puckering.

Floats are those longish lengths of yarn that you carry along with the main yarn

2. Fair-isle is not very stretchy.  Again, those floats.  I discovered this when I switched from the ribbed cuff to the fair-isle pattern.  So I added a little calf-shaping to my socks.

3. Fair-isle is not that hard.  It's a great way to showcase variegated yarns.

After knitting the first sock, I realized that I had goofed on the sole pattern.  So I ended up with two different soles - who's going to see?

Well, besides you...