Spiral Socks

I bought a book (my first knitting ebook) about intarsia in the round. The trick is very clever, and about halfway through these socks, I came to the realization that it doesn't matter where you think the round marker is. That is, I use two circular needles, and I could start with either one, because instead of being a spiral, it's really eight little sub-spiral pieces, and the last one is tucked under the first one, like a folded-together cardboard box top.

The advertisement was "making intarsia easy", and I have to say that it doesn't really do that. Keeping eight bobbins semi-untangled is not easy, regardless of the clever trick.

Flaw one: I should have used a thicker yarn with size 2 needles. It said fingerweight, but for me, it came out a little flopsy. Flaw two: due to some sortof counting error, one toe is a little longer than the other. This never happens with two-at-a-time, but managing sixteen bobbins would have been even more pesky (and two-at-a-time isn't good for patterns where you have to shift the needle boundaries).

But... they really are cool looking.