Matching hand-painted yarn to the perfect pattern can be a frustrating or an exhilarating experience. Get it right and you end up with a sock where the colors in the yarn and the pattern enhance each other for a great result. Get it wrong and you end up with unattractive pools of color or a stitch design that gets lost in the yarn.

Breakdown uses a simple stitch pattern that combines angles formed through increases and decreases with blocks of garter stitch for additional texture. The multi-directional path the yarn takes as the stitch pattern takes shape breaks down the pooling that can occur with hand-painted yarns.

The socks feature a tubular cast-on for maximum stretchiness, a short-row heel and a basic wedge toe. The sock is worked from the cuff down; however the stitch pattern could also be used on a toe-up sock as it is not direction-specific.